Health News
- Older Rural Residents Are More Likely To Seek Care At Rural Hospitals, National Study Finds
Rural hospitals are more likely to serve older patients seeking hospitalization, while younger rural residents seek medical care in urban areas, says a study by the National Center for Health Statistics at the federal Centers for Disease Control....
- Federal Report Says Many Hospitals Wouldn't Keep Critical-access Designation If Distance Rules Were Strictly Enforced
More than two dozen Kentucky communities still have hospitals because of the critical-access hospital program, in which small, isolated hospitals get higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements in return for limiting their size and services. Now federal...
- Lame-duck Congress Could Cut Funding For Critical Access Hospitals; More Than Two Dozen In Kentucky
Critical access hospitals, which in most states are rural facilities with fewer than 25 beds, may be under attack in the lame-duck session of Congress, former national rural-health director Wayne Myers writes for the Daily Yonder. President Obama's...
- Federal Cuts, Financial Instability And Competition Leave Many Rural Hospitals Fearing The Future
Many rural hospitals could be forced to close because of cuts to the Critical Access Program and the fact that, according to the National Rural Health Association, , 41 percent of critical-care hospitals are losing money, reports Jenny Gold of Kaiser...
- Defenders Of Small, Rural Hospitals Take Issue With Study That Found Poor Patient Outcomes
A recent study that concluded small, rural "critical access hospitals" have poorer patient outcomes and lower quality of care is making waves in the medical community. A federally funded monitoring team from three universities issued a response noting...
Health News
Death rates for heart and pneumonia patients at critical-access hospitals are rising nationally, study finds
Death rates are rising at rural critical-access hospitals for Medicare patients who have heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Hospitals designated as critical-access get slightly higher Medicsare and Medicaid reimbursements in exchange for limiting their size, procedures and patient stays. In 2002, they had a death rate of 12.8 percent for such ailments, under the 13 percent rate at other hospitals. But from 2002 to 2010, mortality rates at critical-access hospitals increased 0.1 percent each year, to 13.3 percent, while the rates at other hospitals fell 0.2 percent each year, to 11.4 percent.
There are 1,331 hospitals in the critical access program, Jordan Rau reports for USA Today. "Congress started the critical access program in 1997 to stave off hospital closures in places where patients had no good alternative because the next hospital was at least 35 miles away by regular roads or 15 miles by secondary roads. To qualify hospitals need 25 or fewer beds."
The authors of the study "suggested that the hospitals' care may suffer because they don't have the latest sophisticated technology or specialists to treat the increasingly elderly and frail rural populations," Rau reports. "Since hospitals are not required to submit performance evaluations to Medicare, the government may not realize that facilities could need additional assistance in caring for sicker patients."
Brock Slabach of the National Rural Health Association told Rau that the statistics don't always tell the complete story and that "The association's own research has found that rural hospitals do better in patient satisfaction surveys than do urban hospitals," Rau writes.
Hospitals designated as critical-access get slightly higher Medicsare and Medicaid reimbursements in exchange for limiting their size, procedures and patient stays. In 2002, they had a death rate of 12.8 percent for such ailments, under the 13 percent rate at other hospitals. But from 2002 to 2010, mortality rates at critical-access hospitals increased 0.1 percent each year, to 13.3 percent, while the rates at other hospitals fell 0.2 percent each year, to 11.4 percent.
There are 1,331 hospitals in the critical access program, Jordan Rau reports for USA Today. "Congress started the critical access program in 1997 to stave off hospital closures in places where patients had no good alternative because the next hospital was at least 35 miles away by regular roads or 15 miles by secondary roads. To qualify hospitals need 25 or fewer beds."
The authors of the study "suggested that the hospitals' care may suffer because they don't have the latest sophisticated technology or specialists to treat the increasingly elderly and frail rural populations," Rau reports. "Since hospitals are not required to submit performance evaluations to Medicare, the government may not realize that facilities could need additional assistance in caring for sicker patients."
Brock Slabach of the National Rural Health Association told Rau that the statistics don't always tell the complete story and that "The association's own research has found that rural hospitals do better in patient satisfaction surveys than do urban hospitals," Rau writes.
- Older Rural Residents Are More Likely To Seek Care At Rural Hospitals, National Study Finds
Rural hospitals are more likely to serve older patients seeking hospitalization, while younger rural residents seek medical care in urban areas, says a study by the National Center for Health Statistics at the federal Centers for Disease Control....
- Federal Report Says Many Hospitals Wouldn't Keep Critical-access Designation If Distance Rules Were Strictly Enforced
More than two dozen Kentucky communities still have hospitals because of the critical-access hospital program, in which small, isolated hospitals get higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements in return for limiting their size and services. Now federal...
- Lame-duck Congress Could Cut Funding For Critical Access Hospitals; More Than Two Dozen In Kentucky
Critical access hospitals, which in most states are rural facilities with fewer than 25 beds, may be under attack in the lame-duck session of Congress, former national rural-health director Wayne Myers writes for the Daily Yonder. President Obama's...
- Federal Cuts, Financial Instability And Competition Leave Many Rural Hospitals Fearing The Future
Many rural hospitals could be forced to close because of cuts to the Critical Access Program and the fact that, according to the National Rural Health Association, , 41 percent of critical-care hospitals are losing money, reports Jenny Gold of Kaiser...
- Defenders Of Small, Rural Hospitals Take Issue With Study That Found Poor Patient Outcomes
A recent study that concluded small, rural "critical access hospitals" have poorer patient outcomes and lower quality of care is making waves in the medical community. A federally funded monitoring team from three universities issued a response noting...