The Mid-Shore’s Health Future: Maryland Rural Health Association’s Michelle Clark

With over ten years of experience working with, and for, the rural counties of Maryland on health accessibility issues, Michelle Clark has had a front row seat as executive director of the state’s Rural Health Association while watching the extraordinary changes that have occurred during that time.  Over the course of a decade, Clark has seen both improvements as well as almost insurmountable obstacles in providing access to communities far away from the dominant urban counties that capture the lion’s share of health resources, including doctors, at the state level.

In her Spy interview, Michelle talks about the current state of rural health care, the extraordinarily unique role Maryland is playing in the nation as the only all-payer state, and what rural communities are doing to adjust to an entirely new health services paradigm, which she notes is like living in, “an experiment.”

This video is approximately eight minutes in length

Editor’s Note: Over the next few months the Spy will be interviewing a number of local stakeholder and rural health experts on the special challenges the Mid-Shore faces in terms of accessibility to medical services, facilities, and other special needs as the region awaits the University of Maryland Shore Regional Health’s reorganization draft report later this year.