Future plans for RHIC help city

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - You may not have heard of the Rural Health Innovation Collaborative, but its impact could change the face of the city of Terre Haute. For several years it's been working to improve healthcare education and revitalize downtown.
    
In the Landbaum Center for Health Education Monday night it’s another meeting about the future of the city. But this one has interesting twist.

The focus of the meeting?  The future of the Rural Health Innovation Collaborative or the RHIC.
But to understand how the RHIC will help the city it would be easiest to explain what it does first.

“(The RHIC) an opportunity for students to come together and learn in teams,” Stephanie Laws, the RHIC’s executive Director explained.

“So for example we might have a physician, a nurse, a social worker, a psychologist all working collaboratively around a patient to promote a better outcome."
   
But it’s not just all different types of medical students working together. It also combines the teaching from different schools integrated into one; putting Indiana State, Indiana University, Ivy tech and other students side by side in the classrooms.    
    
Still, there is more. For the RHIC to grow, it will need more classrooms more offices, and more medical buildings.
    
Which officials say will come from neighborhoods between ISU and Union hospital; promoting growth in areas that haven't seen that for some time.

"Using health professions, delivery, and education as an economic revitalization engine in the blighted area of a city, really is a unique project,” Ann Valentine of Ivy Tech said.
    
In fact the city of Terre Haute is one of the principle partners at the table. Speaking at the event, Mayor Bennett explained how important parts of the RHIC have already been to bringing business to the city.
    
He believes the future will bring even more.

"There’s no specific timeline you can ever give, but what’s happened up here in the last few years between union and UAP alone is tremendous,” Bennett said.

“I mean you're talking over 200 million dollars of investment. These are things are gonna come."
    
A city looking at health care as the best medicine for an ailing economy.