Next week, the 12,000 residents of Decatur Country, Tennessee will see their only hospital close its doors. Decatur County General had been serving the county people for over 50 years.
Much of their employees have already been laid off. Only the bare minimum are remaining to oversee the last days of the county’s only hospital.
The effect of the shutdown was palpable in the tightly knit community. For the 100 employees of the hospital, the closure meant that they were out of a job as the global economy has grind to a halt.
Many of them are from the local county. For some, especially long-term employees who have worked over 20 years, this has been the first and only job that they have hold since graduating from school.
The timing of the closure could not have been at a worse time. Although there have been no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Decatur, every neighboring county has at least one confirmed patient.
Unfortunately, this is not a situation that is unique to Decatur and its residents. 8 hospitals have already closed its doors in small rural towns across the United States.
As the virus makes its rapid progress from the metropolitan area, rural towns are woefully underprepared to handle a potential healthcare crisis. According to a research done by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 170 rural hospitals have closed since 2005.
More than three quarters of those closures took place after 2010. The acceleration of closures were already a serious concern for many experts even before the possibility of a pandemic loomed.
The challenges that rural hospitals are facing are the same problems that rural towns are trying to solve: depopulation and older demographics. The insurance system also severely works against the interests of the rural hospitals.
Statistically, those in rural areas are older, less affluent and less healthier than urban residents. The percentage of people without insurance is much higher. All these factors are great burdens for small hospitals to undertake without external assistance.
Whether other struggling hospitals will stay afloat may depend on administrative aid. Regardless of the what the solution is, healthcare experts are concerned. One hospital employee put it plainly that many just won’t be able to get to hospitals in time.
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Replaced!