- To improve the quality of healthcare in Tennessee.
- To accelerate the application of cost-effective, evidence-based medical research to the practice of medicine in rural areas.
- To facilitate better continuity and decreased fragmentation for individuals and families in the rural health care arena
- To facilitate better communication and cooperation between different service providers at the community level, and better collaboration in future development of the local and regional health care communities.
- To facilitate increased awareness and more effective utilization of all sources of health care in rural areas.
- Deliver the best care, at the lowest cost, at the right time, close to home.
- To provide a Disease Management Tool for both disease and wellness care at both the practice and community level. This tool will provide current evidenced based standards, community resources, prompts to deliver the right care, information to build effective systems and measure the impact of these systems at the practice, community, and regional levels.
- Know the resources better.
- Provide a description and directory of services of common resources that are frequently underutilized in rural areas, such as Health Departments, Community Service Agencies, Development Districts, Agricultural Extensions, and Civic Organizations.
- Find the Services Faster.
- Create a database of a broad scope of health care services that is:
- Searchable by geographic location and type of service.
- Able to be updated by anyone via internet with a moderator who will standardize the data entries
- Periodically reviewed for accuracy.
- Increase the dialog.
- Create a List Server that fosters communication between broad varieties of health care providers as they work together to provide good health care.
- Increase awareness and communication between health care communities across the state by providing information on county health councils, health care networks, and other cooperative groups who are facilitating improvements in local health care communities.
- Build in the success of others.
- Showcase those projects, which have been created that address common health care problems in this state, and provide information for others to recreate and build on those programs in their own communities.
- Information provided on the web site will be evidence based and peer reviewed.
- Information provided will prioritized to be most useful at the primary care level, since primary care physicians are most likely to serve as the overall managers/coordinators of the health care of an individual.
- Information provided will be prioritized and designed to be most useful at the local community level.
- Information will be presented efficiently enough that it can be used by a provider who has web access at the point of care.
- The project is designed to promote participation and further developmental design at the grass-roots level, in order to maximize sensitivity to the actual needs of local populations.
- Information will be Wellness Based: It will encourage the development of healthy lifestyles and effective self-management of individuals, and foster the development of community support for healthy living.