Lack Rural Healthcare

Growing up on a farm in rural South Dakota, one learns to go without. Country living often entails going without the newest clothes, technology, or even modern necessities. Unfortunately, it can also include the postponement of medical intervention when health begins to fail. The impact rural health

Introduction 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

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

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,

Why It’s Happening 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

Obamacare is like a seesaw. Either a person has to be all the way at the bottom, or in this case poor, to receive Medicaid, or all the way at the top, or upper class, to afford to buy health insurance outside of employer coverage. There is no happy

Compared with urban VA users, rural users relied more profoundly on the VA and Medicare and less on private insurance or other sources to pay for their health care.

The “What’s Different about Rural Health Care?” (2010), website identified factors contributing to the disparities in health care, “rural Americans face a unique combination of factors that create disparities in health care not found in urban areas. Economic factors, cultural and social differences, educational shortcomings, lack of recognition by legislators and the sheer isolation of living in remote rural areas all conspire to impede rural Americans in their struggle to lead normal, healthy lives.” These disparities increase the risk of mortality in the rural

Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program and Critical Access Hospitals BACKGROUND Significant health disparities between rural and urban populations have been a major concern in the United States. One prominent factor contributing to the disparities is lack of access to quality care in rural areas which is closely associated with challenges faced by rural health care providers (National Rural Health Association, 2007). Rural hospitals are the key health care provider in rural areas, offering essential health care services to nearly 54 million people (American Hospital Association, 2006). They face a series of challenges such as workforce shortages, rise in health care costs, difficulty in finding access to capital, difficulty in

Health Care Needs of the Rural Population 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, &

Health Care System in Turmoil Quality healthcare in the more rural areas of the United States is not only getting more difficult to obtain, but difficult to afford. American citizens living in rural areas have the highest rates of chronic disease, higher poverty populations, less health insurance, and there is less access to primary care physicians. When the economy is at its lowest point it causes an increase in a number of access and health issues that have already had prior problems in communities and in rural areas, therefore the main goal of the national health care tax of 2010 was to allow coverage to all residents of the United States, and also by transferring necessary health care to places that were farther away, such as the

The negative impacts of limited or lack transportation services on rural population include rescheduled or missed appointments, delayed care and missed or delayed medication use (Syed, Gerber & Sharp, 2013). Mattson (2010) claimed that the delay in medical appointment for rural clients not only resulted in missing the care at the time they most need it, but it also can be more serious and costly

Geographic maldistribution has creates barriers of care to people living in rural areas. Although there is an oversupply of physician specialists in many of the urban healthcare areas around the world, while the inner cities and rural community are struggling to attract healthcare physician professional to provide high quality care to the local population. “The supply of specialties has increased more than 100% over the last 20 years, while supply of generalists has increased only 18%” (Niles,2014). Any shortage of health workers can prevent good access to health services and is a barrier to universal coverage. The issue of the matter is that maldistribution of health workers between urban and rural is consider to be virtual concern around

Challenges in Rural Communities 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.

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).