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VIGNETTE I: Mobile Rehabilitation Service

Among other things, most of rural Missouri lacks the
personnel and facility to provide residents with physical
therapy and other rehabilitation services. With the help of
a small grant from Missouri Regional Medical Program, the
Springfield Baptist Hospital Rehabilitation Center sends out
_ personnel by car and by small airplane* to small community
hospitals in the Ozark region to treat patients and to
train personnel in techniques of physical and occupational
therapy.

Skaggs Community Hospital in Branson, a small community
in the southern Ozark region, serves a population whose age
is well above the national average. Before the start of Mobile
Rehabilitation Services weekly visits, physical therapy procedures
at the hospital averaged 30-40 a month. Because of the work
of the unit, the hospital is able to perform 300-400 procedures
a month providing a much needed facility for physicians and
convenience and economy for the patients of the area who
otherwise would have had to travel to Springfield for similar

treatment.

*The pilot of the plane is the therapist herself, giving her

extra mobility without extra cost.
VIGNETTE II: Southeast Missouri Radioisotope Cancer Program

Patients and their physicians in the southeast corner
of Missouri are benefiting through a program at St. Francis
Hospital, Cape Girardeau which demonstrated the utility of
establishing a radioisotope laboratory in a rural area in terms
of improved patient care and diagnosis for cardiovascular
lesions and malignant disease. |

This program whose MoRMP funding ended June 30, 1972,
continues to serve this area. Encouraged by the success of the
Cape Girardeau Program and the guidelines developed in the project,
Levering Hospital in Hannibal, a town in northeastern Missouri
is installing its own radioisotope facility. Some neighboring
hospitals of the Green Hills Cooperative Health Care Group, a
consortium of 13 cooperating hospitals in northcentral Missouri,
(a project also funded by Missouri Regional Medical Program)
have indicated their intention of using the new Hannibal program

in a satellite capacity. -
VIGNETTE III: Biomedical Information Service

Sponsored by Missouri Regional Medical Program, Biomedical
Information Service is intended to provide easy and quick
access for members of the medical profession to medical data,
including bibliographic service, direct poison control information
_ and comprehensive drug information, including interaction and
incompatibilities. Following is one small example of how this
program serves the people of the Missouri Region.

In August, 1972, in a letter to the editor of a small-town
weekly newspaper, a lady gave a recipe for putting up canned
corn, which included the use of two tablespoons of boric acid.
One individual concerned about the use of boric acid internally
reported it to an agency which was interested in the dissemination
of health information, but received no response for nearly four
days. Another individual, a nurse in a local physician's office,
was also concerned and called Biomedical Information Service.
BMIS responded within two hours warning the informant that the
use of boric acid in this quantity for this purpose could be
highly toxic and possibly fatal to young children, and also
gave the probable correct ingredient for the recipe. The

information was received in time to prevent harmful effect.