Health Care Issues Among Rural Areas

With the existing trend of shortages in healthcare providers and professionals, the recruitment and retention of this type of staff in a rural area may

At 16 I experienced rural healthcare at its worst. My older brother and I were home alone when he started having severe stomach pain. I had never seen him cry in pain before and I was terrified. There isn’t a doctor in our hometown, so I drove him to the closest hospital, about 30 minutes away. Neither one of had a cell phone and the hospital staff wouldn’t allow me to use their phone to call my parents because they both had long-distance phone numbers. Hours after we arrived, someone in the waiting room let me use her cell phone to call my mom. When my parents got there, they took my brother to an exam room and then immediately back to surgery—his appendix had burst. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized this experience was not normal. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized similar experiences often happen in rural communities because of the need for primary care physicians and quality health care facilities.

Living on a small farm in Montrose, SD, I have seen the hardships that can go along with living in rural areas. With two parents who commute 30 minutes to work everyday, it was always an almost impossible task to get medical attention for any illness. Experiencing these hardships has helped me gain a great respect for rural clinics, and opened my eyes to the opportunities a rural clinic offers to future medical professionals, such as, myself.

One area where access to care is a problem is in the rural communities. Healthcare professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners, and nurses all affect the quality and cost of care (Derksen, & Whelan, 2009). Going forward importance needs to be placed on using recourses more efficiently and effectively; these resources include but are not limited to tests, prescriptions,

I believe a good thing about current health care in rural areas is The Royal Flying Doctors Service, which delivers primary health care and emergency services to those in rural areas (Flyingdoctor.org.au, 2015).

Healthcare access and delivery in rural area has been challenging not only within the U.S., but also in many developed countries. Many issues seem to be common to this maldistribution of physicians and other HCPs. According to Weinhold and Gurtner1, ” [c]ommunities have become progressively disempowered by the continuous centralization of services and the dismantling of infrastructure.” Rural populations tend to be at

To respond to these legislative changes, there must be an increase in the professional workforce of rural health. The existing workforce will need extensive training to deal with the new aspects of the Affordable Care Act, and new professionals need to be encouraged to practice in rural areas. The following are potential methods for increasing the health care workforce of rural and frontier America:

People living in rural areas are experiencing highly limited excess to health care facilities either because they are not aware of the disease symptoms as a

The rural population is at great risk for poor physical, mental, and social health illness. Compared to the urban communities, there is a lack of equality in health care allocation due to a lack of resources, finances, and focus in the rural population. They are “more likely to report poor or fair health, having diabetes, having chronic disease, being obese, not engaging in health protective behaviors, and experiencing cost as a barrier to initiating or maintaining health care” (Teufel, Goffinet, Land, &

Kentucky has a vast amount of area that is classified as rural. The obstacles faced by health care providers and patients in rural areas are immensely different than those in urban areas (NRHA, 2016.). Accessibility, Availability, and Acceptability are the main issues within the rural population area. The rural population is more likely to engage in risky health-related behaviors and to experience higher rates of chronic conditions and activity limitations.

However, contrary to the expected success of these provisions involving healthcare coverage to rural areas, healthcare coverage to rural areas did not change as much as expected due to several other factors. The same judicial decision in June 2012 that deemed one of the act’s most controversial provisions constitutional also dealt a large setback to extending healthcare coverage in rural areas. The decision ruled that expansion of Medicaid, a state government, become optional for states because Congress had “exceeded its constitutional authority by coercing states into participating in the expansion by threatening them with the loss of existing federal payments” (Supreme Court). Two years later, twenty-four states were not implementing the Medicaid expansion. The states that are not expanding their Medicaid program are primarily the states with Republican-led state governments: Midwestern and Southern states (Weiner 9/15/15). In addition, many states are defining coverages areas differently. When a region chosen as a coverage area combines rural areas and nearby urban areas, the number of insurers and number of coverage plans available to the rural areas increases. As a result, the costs of insurance due to competition and other factors are lowered. Therefore, this is beneficial to both urban and rural residents. However, some states, due to the discretion that they have, are not defining coverage areas that way (Dickstein). One example is Texas, which has created regions

Rural Americans face an exclusive combination of issues that create disparities in health care that are not found in urban areas. Many complications met by healthcare providers and patients in rural arears are massively different than those located in urban areas. Financial factors, cultural and social variances, educational deficiencies, lack of acknowledgement by delegates and the absolute isolation of living in remote rural areas all combined to hinder rural Americans in their struggle to lead a normal, healthy life. Rural hospitals located in rural areas faces many disadvantages, such as; minimum resources, shortcoming or unprepared professionals, and financial disparities. Although many of these challenges could be solved

There are two principal conditions leading to physician shortages in rural communities according to Wright and colleagues. They are “demand-deficient”, meaning they have insufficient populations and resources to support a physician practice, they are “ambiance-challenged,” meaning they are isolated, lack quality services and amenities, and/or are in geographically unattractive settings, or a combination of the two sets of conditions. Inner-city physician shortages are a more recently recognized issue. They are affected by the same conditions, though the specifics are different (Wright, Andrilla, and Hart 2001).

Access to healthcare is a factor of great importance that needs to be addressed by any healthcare system. Issues such as the

A challenge that many rural communities are dealing with is the lack of primary care physicians, specialist, understaffed hospitals, and transportation. “Only about ten percent of physicians practice in rural America despite the fact that nearly one-fourth of the population lives in these areas” (National Rural Health Association [NHRA], n.d., para. 2). Although, there are programs designed to improve patients access to hospitals and physicians in rural areas, provider access for these patients remains a barrier. Technology can bridge some of the gaps of care for these patients and it can be beneficial in many ways. With enhanced technology, primary care physicians and patients will be able to have support, access to quality care, improvement in self-management skills, which ultimately, will improve a patient’s health. To assist physicians with delivery of optimal care and for patients to be able to go to scheduled wellness visits with physicians, a new approach to solving rural health barriers are needed.