About one rural hospital a month has closed since 2010; independent hospitals at highest risk of closure - Entrepreneur Generations

A newly published study from the University of North Carolina reveals that 99 hospitals in the rural United States have closed since 2010 – almost one per month – and many of the ones still open are in financial trouble, Sari Aviv reports for CBS News.

The reasons vary: sometimes it's because an area no longer has the population to support a hospital, sometimes it's because of mismanagement or mergers. Medicaid expansion would have helped some stay open, but reimbursement rates are often so low that hospitals can't break even with them, according to Mark Holmes, a professor of health policy and management at UNC. "Basically about half of rural hospitals are losing money every year," Holmes told CBS.

"Of all rural hospitals, about 21 percent or 430 across 43 states, are at high risk of closing, according to a new report from Navigant. The states with the highest percentage of rural hospitals at risk are Alabama at 50 percent, Mississippi at 48 percent, Georgia at 41percent, and Alaska and Maine at 40 percent," Alex Kacik reports for Modern Healthcare. "Rural stand-alone hospitals are most at risk, with 60.5 percent having lost money on an operating basis in each of the past five years, compared with 42 percent of their urban counterparts."
Independent hospitals are particularly at-risk because they could lose patients to medical facilities like nursing homes or hospices after acute treatment is no longer needed. Independent facilities have increasingly relied on longer patient stays in recent years: "The average weighted length of stay at stand-alone hospitals rose by 6.4 percent between 2012 and 2017 while the average length of stay at system-based hospitals fell 23.5 percent, meaning independent hospitals are reliant on fewer patients staying longer," Kacik reports. "Stand-alone hospitals saw their occupancy rates fall to 43.6 percent in 2017 from 53.9 percent five years earlier, while system hospitals saw their occupancy rates fall to 53.7 percent from 61 percent over the period."

There doesn't seem to be any end in sight for the trend of rural hospital closures. "Every time that I've said, 'I think we're through the worst of it,' we've been surprised," Holmes told CBS. "You always have to wonder, who's next?"

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2CiRBBL About one rural hospital a month has closed since 2010; independent hospitals at highest risk of closure - Entrepreneur Generations

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