Our friend John Roberts with the Nebraska Rural Health Association says: “You can expand insurance coverage, but if you don’t have the personnel it won’t mean anything.”
That seems like an obvious point, yet it’s one that has gone unmentioned by most policymakers now arguing over health reform. In fact, few of the many challenges rural residents face in accessing quality care have made it into the national debate, which is sadly emblematic of the ways rural areas are overlooked in policy discussions.
Consider these alarming statistics:
• Though 25 percent of the U.S. population is scattered across 90 percent of our nation’s rural landscape, fewer than 1 in 10 physicians call such places home.
• Of the 65 million Americans living in areas with too few primary care providers, 50 million are rural residents.
• Over the last 25 years, 470 rural hospitals have closed and another 2,157 areas now suffer from acute physician shortages. In rural Minnesota alone, outlying areas are predicted to face a shortage of 8,000 registered nurses over the next decade.
For more of the story, read my editorial published in the Omaha World-Herald. Our broken health care infrastructure jeopardizes the health of rural residents and the health of rural economies. If this discussion isn’t part of health reform, rural America’s prognosis is grim.
