On the surface, the conventional rural health story is one marked by rising financial pressures, dwindling care access and closure risks. But those constraints don’t define rural healthcare, and the idea that rural systems are always playing “catch up” to…
Rural Health
While rural healthcare challenges are real and largely driven by proposed federal policy shifts, they “cannot be examined in a vacuum,” two Richmond, Va.-based VCU Health hospital presidents wrote in a recent column. Innovation is a necessity for rural hospitals,…
Legislators in Ohio are considering two bills that would create new restrictions for noncompetes as rural healthcare systems in the state continue to face an uphill battle against staffing shortages, The Columbus Dispatch reported May 12. The report delves into…
Norwood, Colo.-based Uncompahgre Medical Center sits in a service area roughly the size of Delaware on Colorado’s Western Slope — a region so sparsely populated that it qualifies as rural and frontier, with about seven people per square mile. As…
The deadline is not here yet, but the bill is already coming due. HR 1‘s most consequential Medicaid changes, work requirements for able-bodied recipients and tighter rules on state financing mechanisms, do not fully take effect until 2027. But hospitals…
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U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., have introduced a bill that would extend the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program for an additional five years. The program allows rural hospitals with fewer than 51 beds that don’t qualify…
Critical access hospitals occupy a singular place in the American healthcare system. With a maximum of 25 inpatient beds and a mandate to provide around-the-clock emergency care, these institutions do far more with far less than almost any other type…
Rural hospitals face an accelerating financial squeeze, driven by declining reimbursement, rising labor costs, workforce shortages and increasing demand from aging populations. In response, policymakers have proposed financial support, including a $50 billion federal allocation intended to stabilize rural healthcare…
Mississippi has established the Mississippi Rural Health Transformation Program Office and launched a related website. The office will coordinate implementation of the state’s rural health plan, align agencies and oversee program administration, according to an April 29 news release from…
Rural healthcare is at an inflection point. Hospitals are closing or scaling back essential services. Labor and delivery units are disappearing. Rural operating rooms sit idle not due to a lack of patients, but to a shortage of clinicians. At…