Nevada Regional Medical Center, which serves much of the area between Joplin and Kansas City, was slated to close before voters chose to increase their taxes in order to save the hospital. The increase is projected to raise 800,000 dollars per year, enough to pay...
“Maternal health is a growing concern,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said at a Kaiser Family Foundation event on June 12, 2019. CMS will be focusing on different ways to improve maternal health in rural areas, including expanding Medicare access to telehealth services and promoting policies...
In a bipartisan op-ed piece this week in The Hill it was revealed that in a joint poll from the American Heart Association, that over 90% of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, consider access to rural health an important issue. For the full op-ed piece...
Rural Hospitals gain a win in Louisiana thanks to a bill Louisiana lawmakers have submitted prohibiting the creation of most new freestanding emergency rooms. The main consideration in the ban is that no freestanding ER can be created in the primary service area of rural...
On May 20, CAH executives met with CMS Administrator Seema Verma to discuss our Regulatory Relief Initiative. On May 21, we met with Senate Finance Committee staff to raise issues reforms needed for CAHs to continue to provide the highest quality of care to our...
Virginia Gay Hospital (VGH), a critical-access hospital in Vinton, Iowa, has a filed a lawsuit against three private insurance companies that oversee the Iowa’s Medicaid program. This is part of the privatization of Medicaid that was launched in Iowa in April 2016. The lawsuit alleges...
With Medicaid expansion on the ballot in this November’s midterm election, some rural hospitals have tempered their expectations of how it would increase their margins. The Nebraska Hospital Association, which has pushed expansion for years, indicated that rural providers might not fully benefit if enough...
The GAO found that most rural hospital closures were the result of financial distress. A 2016 study found that rural hospitals that closed from 2010-2014 had a medial operating margin of -7.41%. The GAO also found a disproportionately higher number of closures among rural hospitals...
Patients in rural Illinois are able to receive care close to home despite the lack of neurologist on staff in their hospital. A new telestroke care program in Illinois has significantly cut response time in those most crucial moments immediately following a stroke. The program...
The Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Center for Children and Families found that the rates of uninsured low-income adult citizens has sharply decreased across the country. Since 2008 and 2009, small towns and rural areas in states that expanded Medicaid have seen the largest decrease...