Evaluation of The Electronic Rural Medicine Strategy (TERMS): Final Report

Abstract

The provision of an equitable and sustainable level of health care in rural communities has been a challenge to the Canadian health care system for some time (Tepper & Rourke, 1999; Rourke, 1997; Hutten-Czapski, 1998). Rural communities have suffered from a shortage of primary care physicians for many years and have felt the chronic shortage longer and more severely than urban areas (Ramsey, Coombs, Hunt, Marshall & Wenrich, 2001). It has been argued that one of the main challenges to a sustainable rural health care system is the ongoing maldistribution of physicians (Rourke, 1997). Some rural hospitals have been at risk of closing because of a lack of physicians, while others have experienced a drastic decrease in the level of health care they can provide (Rourke, 1998; Rourke & Rourke, 1998).