Livestock antibiotics for bronchitis? Check out rural health debate.

Would you take livestock antibiotics to treat bronchitis because you didn't have insurance? And when that didn't work, would you pay $300 for a doctor to tell you what you already knew?

Kim O. from central Minnesota joined the rural health care debate at Insight Now to say "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second. She wound up bargaining the doctor bill down to $125 and got the $25 prescription she needed. But she's not happy with the situation and thinks there must be a better way to use medical providers' time.

Her case is a window into what some rural Minnesotans face when it comes to health care. The Insight Now debate this week focuses on whether letting "midlevel" practitioners like highly-trained paramedics do more, might make care more widely available and reduce the cost. Not all nurses, for example, think that's a good idea, and there's a healthy back and forth going.

Here's what one participant from Fort Worth said about a program there that gives paramedics more responsibility:

The patients are much healthier, we've saved over $3 million in health care costs and reduced "9-1-1" and emergency department use by 51% in the target population. We've also returned over 11,000 bed hours to our local emergency departments for other patients awaiting care. Most of these patients need only gentle reminders about medication use and lifestyle change compliance. RNs are in very short supply and typically function in controlled hospital settings. They are also a pure cost when they are in the home settings. Paramedics can see these community health patients between calls, so there is very little marginal cost for using paramedics in this capacity - that is exactly what we are doing in Fort Worth.

Check it out.

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