Many patients in rural areas of the country face limited access to care as hospitals close or cut back services amid financial pressures. This has become more common for women seeking obstetric care, according to an article published in The New York Times.
In response to the article, rural physicians and healthcare industry workers, as well as urban medical professionals familiar with rural healthcare, weighed in on t the limited access to care for obstetric services and financial challenges in rural areas.
Here are some of the comments, condensed and edited, from The Times website:
1. "I struggled for over 15 years to provide healthcare to several locations in exurbia and to rural parts of the country, with only limited success.
"Reasons for my personal difficulties were numerous, but mostly out of my control. Local civic leaders lacked vision, and local citizens often lacked resources to pay for and support medical services. I ultimately chose to jump ship to a medical system with deep financial backing and a supreme transportation infrastructure, ending my medical career in service to the U.S. Navy.
"Health services need to be part of any town's plan. They are just as vital as police, fire protection, schools and water. When governments fail to provide essential services, they sound the death knell for the communities they purport to serve." — Douglas McNeill, Chesapeake, Va.
2. "As a physician, I once spent two years in a very rural part of California as part of the National Health Care Service. We had a small 10-bed hospital, now out of business. I was a family practitioner who also did obstetrics. Malpractice for delivering babies back then was reasonable; it has since become very costly. It is economically infeasible nowadays to practice obstetrics in rural areas. One needs a large practice to compensate for the high malpractice premiums. Among all the other problems of American healthcare, the litigious nature of our culture also affects the cost of healthcare."— Fred Norman, Stockton, Calif.
3. "I live in a community of 40,000 near Seattle and the publicly built hospital in my city was acquired by a national Catholic hospital chain, which developed a plan to close the hospital and move services to an unincorporated area with fewer low-income patients.
Having worked in hospital finance, I can assure you it is about the money. We need national healthcare that will put patients first and establish budgets for necessary services, not just lucrative ones." — Roberta
Read more comments here.
More articles on leadership and management:
Don't forget the long-run in the quest for cost containment, Lexington Regional Health CEO Leslie Marsh says
Reduce price of care, utilization or both for true impact, says Henry Ford West Bloomfield CEO Lynn Torossian
CEO Dr. Atul Gawande's listening tour to focus on workers' health challenges