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| Aug 13, 2026 | Earlier lifeline for rural hospitals faces test under ‘Big Beautiful’ law | Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
By Sarah Jane Tribble and Tony Leys, KFF Health News
A century-old hospital near Michigan’s southern border was one of the nation’s first to convert into a new emergency-focused model Congress crea... |
| Aug 5, 2026 | Affordability Starts Close to Home: Why Rural Hospitals Are Essential to Lowering Healthcare Costs | Healthcare affordability discussions often focus on premiums, deductibles and drug prices. Those costs matter. But for the more than 46 million Americans who live in rural communities, affordability begins with something even more fundament... |
| Jan 22, 2026 | States race to launch rural health transformation plans | Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
By Sarah Jane Tribble, Arielle Zionts and Maia Rosenfeld, KFF Health News
Imagine starting the new year with the promise of at least a $147 million payout from the federal government. Related Artic... |
| Sep 21, 2025 | Instead of selling, some rural hospitals band together to survive | By Arielle Zionts, KFF Health News
BOWMAN, N.D. — Retta Jacobi stepped onto a metal platform that lifted her to an entrance on the side of a custom-designed semitrailer. Once inside, she lay down on a platform that technicians slid into an ... |
| Apr 12, 2025 | Rural hospitals question whether they can afford Medicare Advantage contracts | Medicare is the main federal health insurance program for people 65 or older. Participants can enroll in traditional, government-run Medicare or in a Medicare Advantage plan run by a private insurance company.
In 2024, 56% of urban Medicare... |
| Mar 18, 2025 | Health | The most likely Medicaid cuts would hit rural areas the hardest | Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao of California, whose Central Valley district is more than two-thirds Hispanic and where 68% of the residents are enrolled in Medicaid, has spoken out against potential cuts.
“I’ve heard from countless cons... |
| Aug 20, 2024 | The Battle for Trans Rights: Misinformation and Medical Necessity | The debate over gender-affirming care in the United States has become a battleground, rife with misinformation and political maneuvering. As states push for restrictive laws, medical professionals and advocates stand firm in their belief th... |
| Aug 17, 2024 | Health | Small-town patients face big hurdles as rural hospitals cut cancer care | For rural patients, getting cancer treatment close to home has always been difficult. But in recent years, chemotherapy deserts have expanded across the United States, with 382 rural hospitals halting services from 2014 to 2022, according t... |
| Jun 11, 2024 | Health | An obscure drug discount program stifles use of federal lifeline by rural hospitals | Federal lawmakers have introduced a handful of legislative solutions since March. In one bill, senators from Kansas and Minnesota list a myriad of tactics, including allowing older closed facilities to reopen.
Another proposal introduced in... |
| Feb 16, 2024 | National Politics | In fight over Medicare payments, the hospital lobby shows its strength | Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News, Colleen DeGuzman | KFF Health News (TNS)
In the battle to control health care costs, hospitals are deploying their political power to protect their bottom lines.
The point of contention: For decades, Medicare... |
| Feb 5, 2024 | Hospital lobbying could sink effort to trim Medicare costs | Hospitals intensely lobbying to stop a bipartisan measure that would trim their Medicare payments are emphasizing how the policy may hobble already struggling rural hospitals.
Why it matters: The hospitals' argument is apparently resonating... |
| Jan 22, 2024 | Health | Rural hospitals are caught in an aging-infrastructure conundrum | Markian Hawryluk | (TNS) KFF Health News
Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital in the 800-person town of Hugo, Colorado, is facing a classic Catch-22: He could boost his rural hospital’s revenues by offering hip replacement... |
| Nov 12, 2023 | A Zip Code Could Determine a Baby’s Fate in the NICU and How Technology Can Change That | Seven neonatal intensive care units serve the entire state of Oregon. One of those NICUs, a Salem Health facility, is the only one of its kind serving both Marion and Polk Counties, a region outside of the Portland metropolitan area where h... |
| Oct 27, 2023 | Health | Tiny, rural hospitals feel the pinch as Medicare Advantage plans grow | Sarah Jane Tribble | (TNS) KFF Health News
When several representatives from private health insurance companies called on him a few years ago to offer Medicare Advantage plan contracts so their enrollees could use his hospital, Bleak sent t... |
| Jul 18, 2023 | Doctors created a primary care clinic as their former hospital struggled | GALLUP, N.M. — About a year ago, Valory Wangler, a family medicine doctor, invited a handful of former co-workers to her backyard.
During the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, Wangler and her colleagues had worked at a hospital in this... |
| Jun 16, 2023 | Illinois Hospital First To Shut Down Completely After Ransomware Attack | You may have noticed that for-profit healthcare in the U.S. is already a hot mess, especially in the most already marginalized parts of the country. Giant, mismanaged health care conglomerates have long pushed their underfunded staffers to ... |
| Apr 10, 2023 | Why US rural policy matters | On December 27, 2022, the New York Times published an essay I wrote calling for a renaissance in federal rural policy. My motivation for writing the article was borne from a frustration of the media’s obsession with rural politics—that is, ... |
| Apr 3, 2023 | State Policymakers Advance Reforms To Expand Access To Care, Reduce Costs | State policy makers pursue reforms that seek to bend the health care cost curve. getty |
| Mar 18, 2023 | Idaho hospital to stop labor and delivery services citing "political climate" and doctor shortages | An Idaho hospital will stop labor and delivery services, citing doctor shortages and the "political climate," the hospital announced Friday.
"Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be ... |
| Oct 20, 2022 | Solutions To Boosting The Financial Health Of Rural Hospitals | Dr. David Lenihan, Ph.D., J.D., FRSM is the CEO/Co-Founder of Tiber Health and the President of Ponce Health Sciences University. |
| Jul 14, 2022 | Empower primary care with adequate payments and technology | Nina, the mother of an autistic teenager, had never experienced a panic attack until Covid-19 closed her son’s school in March 2020. Then they began coming with alarming regularity. Single parenting a disoriented child she couldn’t leave un... |
| Mar 7, 2022 | Hybrid provider Homeward launches with $20M to focus on rural healthcare | Photo: Terry Vine/Blend Images |
| Dec 10, 2021 | A rural Georgia community reels after its hospital closes | Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe.
The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived.
The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived w... |
| Sep 9, 2020 | Rural Communities Needlessly Risk Covid-19 From Prisons | Driving through scenic Western Maryland to West Virginia it is a surprise to discover the Hazelton ... [+] FCI, nicknamed "Misery Mountain." This is what the area looks like, not far from Hazelton FCI. Famartin / CC BY-SA (https:/... |
| Mar 27, 2020 | Coronavirus threatens financial health of Colorado’s struggling rural hospitals | About half of Memorial Regional Health’s revenue comes from outpatient, non-emergency services — the kind most likely to be threatened by the coronavirus pandemic — and the Craig hospital could be forced to make painful cuts if the disease ... |
| Mar 15, 2020 | This coronavirus is unlike anything in our lifetime, and we have to stop comparing it to the flu | Getty Images
Covid-19 has often been compared to Influenza, including by US President Donald Trump.
But comparing the novel coronavirus to the flu is "dangerously inaccurate," particularly due to the higher death rate associated w... |
| Jan 16, 2020 | High-Deductible plans jeopardize financial health of patients, rural hospitals | After her insurance plan had paid its share, Flowers owed $8,000 in medical bills. A big chunk represented the $3,500 deductible from her employer-sponsored health plan. Never one to let the bills pile up, Flowers went to the bank and took ... |
| Feb 21, 2019 | 1 in 5 rural hospitals are at risk of imminent closure. Lawmakers could help some stay open | The decline of rural hospitals has been a slow-moving train wreck. It’s now accelerating.
Since 2010, nearly 100 rural hospitals have closed their doors. The closures have resulted in statistics like this — half of all rural counties lack a... |
| Jan 8, 2018 | In states that didn’t expand Medicaid, hospital closures have spiked
Rural Hospital Closures: 2005 – 2016 | In recent years Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has created a financial fault line in American health care. Hospitals in states that enacted the expansion got a wave of newly insured patients, while those in states that rejected it were left... |
| May 18, 2017 | In rural Tennessee, a hospital turns to crowdfunding to stay afloat
Rural Hospital Closures: 2005 – 2016 | In the southeast corner of Tennessee, one rural hospital has fallen into such dire financial straits it suspended inpatient services earlier this month. Now, the new CEO of the Copper Basin Medical Center has launched a GoFundMe campaign to... |
| Feb 16, 2017 | Pregnant women often have to travel an hour or more to deliver in rural America | By the time the pregnant woman arrived at the nearest hospital with a maternity ward—90 minutes after leaving her home in Winfield, Ala.—she was ready to deliver her baby. She made it just in time, recalls Dan Avery, an obstetrician–gynecol... |
| Dec 21, 2016 | A mayor fights to save a small-town hospital: ‘It’s life or death’
Rural Hospital Closures: 2005 – 2016 | Mayor Adam O’Neal wants his hospital back.
He was born in Pungo District Hospital in the sleepy town of Belhaven, N.C. Decades later, as mayor of Belhaven, he counted on the hospital to provide not just health care, but scores of jobs. In h... |
| Sep 7, 2016 | Study: Medicaid expansion a big factor in rural hospitals’ profitability | Rural hospitals have long argued they were hurt by the lack of Medicaid expansion, which leaves many of their patients without insurance coverage and strains the hospitals’ ability to better serve the public. The study suggests they have a ... |
| May 4, 2015 | The worst thing that happens when hospitals close? Patients drive farther | While the researchers noted that some people might be inconvenienced by having to travel further for care, they found no significant changes in how often Medicare beneficiaries were admitted to hospitals, how long they stayed or how much th... |
| Apr 17, 2012 | IMRT beats proton therapy in prostate cancer, UNC comparative study says | “This study validated our change in practice, showing that IMRT better controls prostate cancer and results in fewer side effects,” Chen said in a statement.
UNC researchers used Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Medicare da... |
| IMRT beats proton therapy in prostate cancer, UNC comparative study says | In prostate cancer treatment, newer might not necessarily be better.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill research has found that intensity modulated radiation therapy, or IMRT, is as effective and produces fewer side effects than th... |
| Study: Medicaid expansion a big factor in rural hospitals’ profitability | It isn’t news that in rural parts of the country, people have a harder time accessing good healthcare. But new evidence suggests opposition to a key part of the 2010 health overhaul could be adding to the gap.
The finding comes from a study... |
| High-Deductible plans jeopardize financial health of patients, rural hospitals | Kristie Flowers had been sick with the flu for four or five days in July before the 52-year-old registered nurse from Genoa, Colo., acknowledged she needed to go to the ER.
At Lincoln Community Hospital, about 10 miles from her home on the ... |
| The worst thing that happens when hospitals close? Patients drive farther | A hospital closure can send tremors through a city or town, leaving residents fearful about how they will be cared for in emergencies and serious illnesses. A study released Monday offers some comfort, finding that when hospitals shut down,... |
| Rural hospitals are caught in an aging-infrastructure conundrum | Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital in the 800-person town of Hugo, Colorado, is facing a classic Catch-22: He could boost his rural hospital’s revenues by offering hip replacements and shoulder surgeries, but the 64-year... |
| How one healthcare startup is betting on telemedicine and mobile clinics to remodel patient care in rural America | Westend61/Getty Images
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Kazi Awal/Insider
Hospital closures are symptomatic of broken healthcare infrastructure in rural America.
Homeward, a healthcare startup, is using a hybrid model to pioneer a new way of patient care.
This a... |
| In a small town in Texas, a rural hospital thrives against all odds
Rural Hospital Closures: 2005 – 2016 | CHILDRESS, Texas — To get to the hospital, you drive. And drive. It’s 220 miles northwest from Fort Worth, along a flat landscape with lots of sky and lots of cows and lots of haystacks.
Childress Regional Medical Center is not particularly... |
| Shuttered hospitals, soaring Covid-19 deaths: Rural Black communities lose a lifeline in the century’s worst health crisis | DAWSON, Ga. — In every corner of Latasha Taylor’s home are plants she knows nothing about. After years spent shirking her mother’s calls to join her in the yard at sunrise, Taylor now waters them out of duty.
When her mom, Kat, was dying of... |
| A rural Georgia community reels after its hospital closes | Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe.
The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived.
The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived w... |
