Beyond “To Close Or Not To Close” Rural Hospitals

https://goo.gl/PtXA4Z

About 60 million Americans live in rural areas. And almost every health statistic shows they’re falling behind their fellow Americans who live in urban areas. Rural residents are less likely to have health insurance coverage through a jobhave lower incomes, and have higher rates of death from heart disease and stroke.

However, there’s not only a health gap widening between urban and rural areas. There’s also a growing gap between the way systems of health work in different areas of the country.

As reported in a recent study commissioned by the Episcopal Health Foundation (EHF), seventeen rural hospitals in Texas have closed since 2010. After EHF released the report this May, two more rural hospitals—East Texas Medical Center Trinity in Trinity, Texas, and Timberlands Healthcare in Crockett, Texas—announced their closures. At EHF, we have followed with great interest the changes and challenges in rural health care, and particularly the impact on rural communities when their hospitals close.

We believe the financial pressures experienced by rural hospitals are likely to continue. As a philanthropy serving both rural and urban communities, EHF wanted to understand in this study how rural communities threatened by hospital closures could ensure that a reliable system of health care services would be accessible to residents, should their hospital close.

We knew this was a complicated problem that required critical analysis to develop practical solutions. We were fortunate to partner with a great team at the Rural and Community Health Institute (RCHI) at Texas A&M University. The team is led by Nancy Dickey, a visionary rural health leader, researcher, and former American Medical Association president.

The recently released report from Dickey and her team is titled What’s Next? Practical Suggestions for Rural Communities Facing a Hospital Closure. It’s a powerful narrative on the opportunities for rural communities to optimize their health care delivery systems in the face of hospital closures.