UNC professor: I 'thank God I'm an academic and not the CEO of a rural hospital'

Health disparities and hospital closures are making the job of rural hospital CEO one not many covet.

Since 2005, the Rural Health Research Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recorded at least 163 rural hospital closures, with more than 60 percent of them shuttering since 2012. Last year brought the most rural hospital closures in a single year, at 19.

George Pink, PhD, a leader of the rural health research program, told Pew the multitude of problems facing rural hospital CEOs is staggering, like health disparities, physician shortages and reimbursement challenges.

"Not a day doesn't go by that I don't thank God I'm an academic and not the CEO of a rural hospital," Dr. Pink told Pew. "Recruiting providers, finding money, dealing with payers and lawsuits, dealing with the poor health outcomes, opioid addiction."

But as daunting as the landscape is, Pew said rural health leaders are in a unique position to try novel ways to deliver healthcare, thanks in part to their smaller scale. Rural hospitals have looked toward private-public relationships to widen access to care, mobile medical units, telemedicine and investments in attracting young health professionals to rural areas.

Loren Stone, the CEO of Endless Mountains Health Systems in Susquehanna County, Pa., shared with Pew that it's trying some of these new models. For example, the health system is deploying its personnel in innovative ways, like monitoring patients in their homes and helping them get to medical appointments.

Read the full report here.

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