After 66 years in business, my hometown hospital recently closed its doors to patients. Gone is the emergency room, skilled nursing facility, lab, radiology, and physical therapy services — as well as 67 full-time jobs. Meanwhile, in the past six years. 72 rural hospitals in the U.S. have closed, including nine already in 2016. One in three rural hospitals is at risk of closing, and according to the National Rural Health Association’s Journal of Rural Health, closure rates have increased 600 percent in the put five years.
Across the country, small towns are literally losing their lifelines. What gets lost in this story is what these closures mean lot the towns whose hospitals are shuttered. Sure. It’s obvious that jobs, public safety and community institutions are at stake. But what are we really doing by letting that institutions die? Where is this all going? The first loss is a sense of safety and security, one that is backed up by hard evidence. A 2014 study in Health Affairs showed that the death rates for patients in towns where the ER recently closed increased 5 percent across the board and 15 percent when patients had a heart attack or stroke.