The slow death of rural healthcare

https://www.medpagetoday.com/hospitalbasedmedicine/generalhospitalpractice/111463?xid=nl_mpt_Nursing_update_2024-08-15&eun=g2225995d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Automated%20Specialty%20Update%20Nursing%20%202024-08-15&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_SurveySlideshows_Nursing

This article discusses many portions quite well.

Rural healthcare closures are something that affect me personally. While my family is fortunate to live in an area with larger towns in close proximity and a larger city an hour away, if they were to lose their little local hospital and clinic, thousands of patients (many older and on Medicare) would lose access to healthcare. Prime example? A week ago, my mom had a horrible outbreak of hives. Head to toe huge welts. To the point her eye was swelling shut. She could not drive herself 15 miles to the “big” hospital as she had taken a good dose of Benadryl already. Fortunately, the little local clinic/hospital is less than a half mile away, and she was able to get care quickly. She was the only person in their little emergency department that evening. This hospital and clinic provide most of the care for the local skilled nursing facility. They have been on the funding chopping block before, and were acquired by a larger hospital to keep them open.

Without these rural clinics, people die. When minutes matter, you don’t have time for a 20 minute ambulance ride or to wait on a chopper to fly to you, pick you up, and bring you to the nearest trauma center an hour away by car.

Who can we thank for this crisis? Insurance companies. They want to reduce what clinics/hospitals/clinicians get paid to care for people, and in doing so, the facility cannot afford to stay open. The victims are the patients who lost their local healthcare. In many rural counties, there are no hospitals or clinics in the entire county. Again……minutes save lives.

I know most of us are anti medical industrial regime. But I will give a shoutout to my little hometown clinic. They didn’t push covid nonsense. They didn’t admit people and throw them on remdesivir. They were one of the good guys during covid. Both of my parents have amazing providers that didn’t push the propaganda, they just try to help them with their ailments and keep them healthy. Rural medicine is doing that. Rural medicine is a different breed of care, and isn’t into the political nonsense that big city medicine is. The bigger towns just 15 miles away practice big city medicine and did push the covid narrative. But rural healthcare didn’t.

We need a return to Mainstreet medicine. The big fancy city glass towers aren’t in it for you. My practice is on the fringe of the city. We are not a fancy building. We are in a complex with very few frills. Our lobby chairs don’t match. We still have the 1990’s version sliding glass receptionist windows. We do have new carpet and paint! But we are fiscally responsible. We have the lowest (and transparent) self pay rates in the city for psychiatric care. We keep our overhead as low as we can so we can pass that savings on to patients. We do that by staying in a 30 year old building rather than some fancy new modern place.

As we rebuild medicine into something respectable again, keep these things in mind. ♥️