Hospitals in Utah reduce costs, improve use of facilities.

A serious problem in rural areas is low occupancy for acute care hospital beds and a desperate need for additional long-term care beds. In Utah, this problem has been solved through the "swing bed" concept. Under this program, underutilized acute care beds can be used for long-term care patients. As a result, all beds are more fully utilized, and long-term care patients in rural areas do not have to be moved to cities.

Emergency/outpatient satellites serve as rural outposts.

Physician recruitment problems and sudden population growth placed a severe strain on several New Hampshire communities until civic and hospital leaders pooled resources to develop combined emergency/outpatient satellites. Range of services, staffing, operations, financing, and impact of the satellites are discussed in detail.

Nutrition, development, and foreign aid: a case study of U.S.-directed health care in Colombian plantation zone.

Based on a case study of some aspects of Rockefeller and USAID intervention in the Cauca Valley, Colombia, this article is aimed at drawing attention to the political characteristics and inadequacies of U.S.-sponsored health care planning and research in the Third World, particularly as regards nutrition in rural regions of intensive economic development. By contrasting an historical analysis of the politicoeconomic development of agriculture and nutrition in the southern Cauca Valley with the assumptions guiding U.S. intervention in the health field there, a more complete picture of the causes of malnutrition is obtained, among which should be counted the intervention of the U.S. itself. Inter alia, other approaches to the malnutrition problem are suggested.