Worryingly, access to healthcare in rural communities is at serious risk. A new report from the nonprofit Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform shows that more than 700 rural hospitals—over 30% of all rural hospitals in the country—are at risk of closure.
Another report by healthcare consulting firm Chartis estimates that 167 rural hospitals have closed since 2010 and that another 418 could follow if the trend is not reversed.
While the data are concerning, I am encouraged that they highlight the dire situation facing nonprofit rural community hospitals like ours.
For more than 140 years, Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS) has been providing health and healing to patients in small communities in rural Wisconsin and southern and central Illinois.
Our Hospitaller Sisters were among the first to travel to remote communities and share their mission to reveal and embody the healing love of Christ to all people through our high-quality Franciscan health care.
More: Now it’s your turn: Illinois’ gasoline tax hike is already paying off
Today, HSHS hospitals and physicians continue to provide compassionate, healing care to all people, regardless of ability to pay, in the communities we serve.
We are strong and committed to growth to serve our patients and communities at the highest level, but we must raise awareness of the systemic issues that threaten nonprofit, community hospital systems.
In an increasingly complex and demanding health care system, HSHS – like many other nonprofit and community hospital systems – has pursued every strategy available to maintain health care for those who entrust us with their care. We are reducing expenses despite rising inflation, increasing efficiency, and looking for ways to attract and retain experienced nurses despite historic labor shortages.
To protect rural health care in America, we must find solutions that address the regulatory complexities, reimbursement challenges, rising operating costs, unnecessary competition for patients, and other hurdles that make our business so difficult. These are the factors that are creating the troubling circumstances in which hospitals have no choice but to discontinue or close their core services.
Providing affordable and accessible health care to millions of people, especially in rural areas, should be a top priority for health policymakers.
As the CEO of a Catholic, nonprofit health care system, I am convinced that health care was never designed to be excessively profitable.
However, it should and must be sustainable. It is time to work together on creative solutions to the underlying systemic problems that threaten healthcare in rural areas.
Damond W. Boatwright is president and CEO of Hospital Sisters Health System.
