One such rift exists for rural Americans, who like city dwellers struggle with rising costs and shrinking insurance coverage, but who also inhabit places where getting the health care they need is tougher.
Jobs that provide health-care coverage are scarce in many small communities. Growing numbers of over-65 rural residents are covered by Medicare, but they’re unlikely to live near a doctor or hospital.
To make matters worse, alcohol abuse and smokeless tobacco use plant the seeds of future health problems in some rural locales.
To get more people thinking about these issues, the Association of Health Care Journalists put on its first Rural Health Journalism Workshop at the University of Missouri-Columbia last weekend. More than 70 journalists from around the country attended.
“Maybe a quarter of the country lives in what are considered rural areas, but they are the most overlooked Americans when it comes to access to health services and information,” said Len Bruzzese, executive director of the association.
He said reporters need to tell rural residents how they can live healthier lives “and inform the rest of the country about the need for more and better services to improve the lives of their rural brethren.”
Speakers at the workshop included Don Sipes, vice president of regional services for St. Luke’s Health System and chief executive officer of St. Luke’s Northland Hospital-Smithville campus.
Sipes said many rural hospitals have suffered and even closed in recent years because their patient volume and Medicare reimbursement couldn’t keep up with the skyrocketing cost of new medical equipment.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, he said. St. Luke’s operates several rural hospitals and health clinics, and doctors in the system’s telemedicine program use two-way videoconferencing to evaluate the health of patients in underserved communities.
“In many cases, we can keep these patients in their communities and deliver the same quality of care that we would were they brought to Kansas City,” Sipes said.
Physician Michael Kennedy, assistant dean of rural health education at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, spoke about the health-care needs of immigrants who are moving to rural communities in search of jobs.
Many small communities are in search of new businesses. But Rex Nelson, alternate federal co-chairman of the Delta Regional Authority economic development agency, said towns in rural America will have to recruit physicians before they can recruit new businesses.
“It’s not just developing a business park. It now has to include health care.” Nelson said.
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