Ambulance Time Increases A Lot When a Rural Hospital Closes

A rural hospital closure in Kansas causing the lack of access to emergency care has had some devastating impacts on the patients in the community, especially when the emergency department that remained open was closed for renovations. During the two-week period, patients had to be driven long distances, or airlifted, for the care that they needed. In one instance, a patient had to wait for a dispatcher to check with four separate air ambulance bases to find a pilot to take her to a nearby hospital. On average, a new report found that average ambulance transport time for a rural patient rose from 14.2 minutes to 25.1 minutes after a hospital closed, leading to horrible consequences for patients in rural areas. Click here to read the full report.

• For a rural hospital on the brink of insolvency in Missouri, where 3 other hospitals have shut down in the past few years, every penny of collection counts. Poplar Bluff Regional is the last hospital standing in 5 counties in SE Missouri, and its patient population faces the same financial issues that the hospital does, so with a cash-poor hospital and even poorer patients, the hospital turns to the courts to sue for outstanding balances. Click here for details.