From left to proper: Sarah Jane Tribble, senior correspondent with Kaiser Well being Information and featured luncheon speaker Stephanie Boynton, F.A.C.H.E., vp and chief govt officer of vital entry hospitals for Erlanger Bledsoe Hospital and Erlanger Western Carolina Hospital.
When reporting on the state of rural medical services, there’s extra to the story than the demand for well being care companies. Different components affect the survival, closure, or modifications to companies supplied by suppliers in additional sparsely populated areas. The financial prosperity of these areas, for example, seems to be tightly intertwined with the kind and high quality of care accessible to the individuals who reside there — who are typically in worse well being than their city friends.
That was among the many potential story threads that emerged throughout a presentation at AHCJ’s Rural Health Journalism Workshop 2022 in Chattanooga earlier this month. Stephanie Boynton, F.A.C.H.E., featured luncheon speaker and vp and CEO of vital entry hospitals for Erlanger Bledsoe Hospital and Erlanger Western Carolina Hospital, talked in regards to the impression of Erlanger Health System’s acquisition of services in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.
Boynton described the perilous scenario the hospitals had been in. “Phrase was out: we weren’t paying distributors, we weren’t paying workers,” she mentioned. “Properly, we had been paying them, however we had been holding [the checks] to the eleventh hour. That will get out locally, and other people doubt the companies that you just supply.”
These credibility points went away when Erlanger, based mostly in Chattanooga, stepped in — not simply with money but additionally credibility, she mentioned.
A Q&A moderated by Kaiser Well being Information senior correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble, who writes in regards to the state of rural well being within the U.S., adopted Boynton’s presentation. Questions targeted on the monetary challenges that hospitals, emergency departments, and clinics face; the methods Medicaid reimbursements have an effect on well being care entry in these areas; and modifications firms make after they take over services, together with bringing in additional main and specialty care physicians and eliminating surgical procedures from their companies roster.
Different subjects that got here up had been how closures of services might contribute to already troubling unemployment and poverty charges, initiatives for supplier residencies aimed to draw and retain physicians within the nation’s much less populated areas and neighborhood and worker help for the businesses that take over services.
Listed below are 4 reporting ideas and sources that we took away from Boynton’s presentation and Q&A with reporters that can assist you present extra context to tales:
- Tackle the outlook of illness tendencies among the many inhabitants in rural areas. In response to an evaluation from the CDC that checked out mortality charges between 1999 and 2019, the mortality charges of the ten most typical causes of demise within the yr earlier than COVID-19 ravaged the nation had been greater in much less dense areas than in additional populated ones. That development was noticed in women and men. CDC information affords story concepts about well being tendencies in race and ethnic inhabitants teams. And company analysis has proven that non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic American adults who reside in non-urban communities are extra seemingly than their non-Hispanic white friends to say that they’re in truthful or poor well being.
- Present financial and demographic context of the communities you’re writing about. Take a look at reviews from the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service for information on inhabitants migration patterns, earnings information by race and ethnicity, and employment. The 2021 edition of the “Rural America at a Look” collection additionally contains details about broadband web entry. Suppose tanks such because the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center might also have information about social determinants of well being.
- Discover out about tendencies in different areas with the same inhabitants and financial profile. A caveat right here: state and federal businesses might have completely different definitions of what’s thought-about a rural space. Interview demographers who put together authorities reviews that can assist you perceive the subtleties of these distinctions. This report in regards to the inhabitants in rural areas from the U.S. Census Bureau, addresses the definitions the company makes use of in its analysis. The National Center for Health Statistics affords data on its web site in regards to the definition it makes use of.
- Ask hospital programs what makes a rural hospital, emergency division or clinic enticing to potential patrons. For-profit and nonprofit well being care programs need to, on the very least, break even of their funding. What’s in it for them to purchase services which have been within the purple for many years and want main enhancements partially as a result of they haven’t saved up with routine upkeep for many years? How do inhabitants modifications and illness tendencies have an effect on their selections?
