Like so many of the tens of millions of people who grew up in rural America, Mike Rowland spent much of his childhood outside. Specifically, outside and down at the river, where life took shape. He rode dirt bikes, fished, hunted for crawdads, swam, and ran wild and free while constantly coming up with new ways to enjoy life. Outside of his family, the river is what he misses most about home.
“Whenever I had the chance, I spent all of my time there,” Mike shares as he recalls what it was like to “grow up rural.” He speaks fondly of his hometown, a small community tucked away in southeast Indiana, the endless rotation of pets he kept, and the life his family lived.
Mike’s dad was a firefighter, and his mom worked at a local factory. It was the kind of factory that supported the entire community and the kind that devastated everything when it closed. The city had built much of its existence around the factory. When it shut down, the population dwindled. Essential services followed. The local rural hospital was lost.
“It reminds me how tied together rural health is to its environment,” Mike notes as he also recalls his aunt’s passing and wonders if that hospital being open may have helped her. The experience left an impression. Rural health care, he believes, needs solutions that do not force people to migrate elsewhere for care.
As he moved around the country in adulthood, Mike gained perspective. He saw rural and urban communities wrestling with many of the same challenges, just with different levels of resources. The contrast sharpened his thinking.
“Rural health deserves technology as much as the big systems do,” he says as the conversation turns to the work he does today. “Still, we have to acknowledge that, while an idea is great, it may not be practical to implement at a rural level.” He adds that “we can’t always fix a rural problem with a big city solution."
Today, Mike serves as The Center’s “telehealth expert.” It’s more than that though. As a Lead Program Specialist, he supports rural hospitals and clinics on all aspects of health care technology through the Delta Region Community Health Systems Development Program and the Rural Hospital Stabilization Program. He reviews technology and service line assessments along with organizations’ action plans, then he works alongside teams to move from idea to implementation.
There are challenges along the way.
“Rural hospitals, standalone ones, won’t get the same attention from high-grade technology companies that, say, a system may,” Mike explains, pointing to the influence economy of scale has on health information technology in rural areas. “It’s a reality that organizations have to work through.” He also notes the growing need for cybersecurity support in rural health care. “There are still those that don’t understand the difference between phishing and fishing.”
Despite the challenges, Mike remains optimistic. His favorite success stories are the ones where a health care organization’s team takes an idea and runs with it. “They own it and that can make all the difference in whether or not an idea is successful.” Telehealth implementation stands out. “They aren’t replacing health care with a computer. They are going to places where there is little to no health care and filling in those gaps. And the idea is replicable, which is what we like to see.”
Mike does not shy away from the complexity of integrating technology into rural communities. “We need to continuously reframe the conversation and think about new ways to implement technology. Done correctly, there are endless opportunities in rural health and in a way where you don’t have to leave your community to get the care you need,” he says.
In many ways, it is a full-circle moment. A barefoot child at the river, making his own fun and discovering what was possible in the simplest surroundings, developed a sense of wonder that never left. That same sense of wonder now shows up in conversations with rural health care leaders as they consider what their organizations can achieve.
One might argue that Mike’s perspective is exactly what rural health care needs. The contrast is not lost on him that his rural background and river-based childhood now inform his approach to a technology-centric delivery system.
“People in these communities can relate to your life and yours to theirs. It’s important for the human connection to not get lost in all the technology.”
