Rural Health Innovations

The Center assists rural health care facilities and health care vendors with product design and marketing through Rural Health Innovations LLC (RHI). RHI works with clients to support what has become an emerging market.

The Problem

Health care vendors face two challenges: designing products and services that match their clients’ needs, and marketing effectively to those clients. Vendors find that rural health care facilities remain extremely sensitive to costs, despite some improvement in reimbursement.

It’s sometimes said that “rural is not small urban.”  For example, performance improvement may call for a different approach in a small rural facility. 

At the same time, many vendors tend to use marketing techniques developed for the large urban market place but ineffective in a rural setting.

The Solution

RHI works with vendor clients to identify the product needs of rural health care facilities, and ways to market their products and form relationships with purchasers. RHI provides vendors with a sense of the rural landscape and how rural facilities receive funding.

For more information about ways RHI can help you as a vendor or a rural health care facility, please contact Sally Trnka at (218) 727-9390 ext. 233 or strnka@ruralcenter.org.