Delivering health care in rural Victoria poses many challenges. Rural health workers can experience professional isolation while rural patients travel long distances to access specialist health care. The Sisters of Charity Health Service is undertaking a project that addresses some of these challenges. "Partnerships in Rural Health Care" is a six month project that aims to identify current issues in rural health care. The research findings will inform the development of a "partnership model" which will offer new and innovative ways for metropolitan health services to work with and support rural health services. Twelve Victorian country hospitals are involved in the project. The project methodology includes a qualitative and quantitative analysis to identify needs and issues of rural patients and health workers. Extensive interviews with rural health providers and a survey of rural patients accessing Melbourne tertiary services have been conducted. The research findings are currently being compiled however issues identified include: inadequacy of communication between metropolitan and rural health services, co-ordination and communication issues around outpatient appointments, rural health worker difficulties in accessing patient information from metropolitan hospitals, problematic discharge planning of rural patients from metropolitan hospitals, rural hospital access issues for patients needing tertiary level of care and the need for education and support in rural areas from specialty medical services. This paper will outline the project purpose, methodology, findings and present the proposed partnership model. The model will have relevance to other metropolitan health services, it will offer opportunities to enhance rural patient care and promote the development of rural and metropolitan health service partnerships.