Rural hospitals in Pennsylvania must hitch themselves to larger health and hospital systems if they are to ensure their survival, one former member of Congress says.
As financially challenged rural hospitals face obstacles that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more of them will likely close, adding to the five such facilities that have shuttered their doors since 2005, Ryan Costello, a former U.S. representative from Pennsylvania, said in a March 3 opinion piece in the Daily Local News.
Rural communities struggle with accessing healthcare services far more than their urban counterparts in the state, Mr. Costello said.
"Overshadowed by urban areas like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, rural Pennsylvania has always been an afterthought in almost every area," he wrote. "These folks are the ones most vulnerable to their nearby hospitals shutting down, forcing them to travel for hours to find their nearest physician."
Consolidation with larger health systems would help mitigate the burden of rising patient costs and would allow individual hospitals to better combat the challenges of inflation, Mr. Costello wrote. It would also help smaller hospitals by improving efficiencies.
Public officials must do what they can to support such consolidation, Mr. Costello concluded.
"Rather than nitpicking the marginal downsides of hospital mergers, our public officials must support consolidations and save the remaining rural hospitals from shuttering."