Harnessing the chaos in health care reform with provider-community partnerships.

Within a context of national chaos as a reformed health care system is being forged, providers and consumers of care alike are expressing concern about the appropriateness of services. Particularly concerned are rural and other medically underserved populations. Provider-community partnerships are an effective model to develop a continuum of care that is of high quality and meshes with local preferences. The article describes the characteristics of a competent and empowered community. It also presents strategies to help nurses work with populations to achieve this goal as a way to develop, market, manage, and evaluate community-specific health care programs.