What can a home-grown lawyer offer to rural healthcare? This week we are having a conversation with Elizabeth Burrows, the owner of Burrows Consulting Inc. A lawyer turned health consultant, she provides a unique perspective on rural health and policy.
What scares me the most about our future is finding providers or signing providers that are going to embrace living in rural areas
-Elizabeth Burrows
Elizabeth is an alumnus of North Vermillion High School and graduated magna cum laude from DePauw University with a degree in Political Science and Communications where she studied abroad at Oxford University. She went on to receive her Doctor of Jurisprudence from Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Elizabeth worked at the Indiana State Department of Health as the Director of the State Office of Rural Health, where she more than tripled the amount of federal funding for critical access hospitals.
Elizabeth then returned to Cayuga, her hometown, to start up and serve as the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Valley Professionals Community Health Center (previously the Vermillion-Parke Community Health Center), which grew over 1000% in the eight years she served as CEO. During that time, Elizabeth started the first mobile school-based health center with leadership from Senator Lugar and his staff to serve rural schools. She was selected as a leader in the CMS Practice Transformation project leading her health center to become nationally accredited as a Level 3 Patient-Centered Medical Home.
In 2014, Elizabeth started her own business, Burrows Consulting, Inc. where she has assisted numerous rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers, institutions of higher education, critical access hospitals, rural health associations, and other non-profits attain over $92,000,000 in grant funding and over $100,000,000 in enhanced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement and 340B Shared Savings. She has worked with health care facilities in 28 states and created over fifteen new federally qualified health center entities. Through her consulting business, she has also served as an Interim CEO for entities seeking FQHC designation.
She graduated from the Lugar Series for Excellence in Public Service, received the Governor’s Award for Tomorrow’s Leaders, is a 2011 National Rural Health Association Rural Health Fellow, and was given the DePauw University Alumni Community Leadership Award. Elizabeth was named a Fellow for the National Leadership Academy of Public Health and is a member of the Indiana State Bar Association. Elizabeth resides near her family farm in Vermillion County, Indiana, and enjoys spending time with her husband, Steve, and daughters, Eleanor age 12, and Amelia age 10. Together, the four enjoy traveling, visiting Indiana and national historic sites, and competing at sheep shows.