Rural Health Care Provider Interviews: Developing a Strong Rural Health Care Infrastructure - Challenges and Successes

As part of a State initiative to develop a plan for providing Arizonans with affordable, accessible health insurance, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System Administration undertook a qualitative data gathering effort to better understand the issues faced by rural practitioners and to ensure the implementation of effective strategies for enhancing the rural provider network. This study involving key stakeholder interviews was propelled by the recognition that any efforts to enhance the availability of coverage would be ineffectual if improvements were not made to the rural health care infrastructure including increasing the accessibility to health care providers.