Closing of Rural Hospitals across U.S. Upends Communities
Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley
AllGov.com
Saturday, October 10, 2015
The United States has lost nearly 60 rural hospitals over the past five years, leaving communities across the country looking for health care services and enduring the fallout from the closures.
University of North Carolina’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research has found that 57 rural hospitals have closed since 2010. The total will reach 58 this weekend when the town of Independence, Kansas, will lose its hospital, according to The New York Times.
Hospital closures have an outsized effect on rural communities. “The rural population tends to be older, sicker and poorer than their urban counterparts and are much more reliant on Medicaid and Medicare. So cuts to those programs, along with regulatory burdens on rural hospitals, are hitting these hospitals hard,” Diane Calmus, government affairs and policy manager at the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) told Healthcare Dive.
Declining reimbursements, more regulation and a shrinking rural patient base could cause more hospitals to close, according to the Times’ Mitch Smith and Abby Goodnough.
Other rural hospitals from Maine to California have also closed. They not only were mainstays of their communities, but also provided jobs and economic stability. Local leaders are trying to figure out how to replace them and mitigate the effects of their closing.
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