AHA's Rural Podcast Series

Recently, the hospital leadership team of Ouachita County Medical Center in Camden, Ark., made the “heart-wrenching decision” to close a rural health clinic that the hospital had operated for 25 years. Leaders and staff also took wage cuts and reduced work hours. Take that one sad event . . . multiply it by more than 135 times over the past dozen years . . . and you’ve got some idea of the alarming economic challenges facing our nation’s rural and low-volume hospitals. Hospitals and health systems across the United States are experiencing unprecedented financial pressures right now. Labor shortages, increased expenses, and lower Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates impact most care providers, and none more so than rural hospitals.

On this Leadership Dialogue Series podcast, AHA Board Chair Wright L. Lassiter III is joined by Peggy Abbott, CEO of Ouachita County Medical Center, to discuss how the current economic stressors are affecting the small, rural hospital she leads. Like every hospital leader, Abbott’s foremost concern is keeping the doors open and continuing to meet patients’ and community health needs. Lassiter and Abbott talk about what that’s going to take . . . what changes are needed to keep the health care system in America as we know it functioning. As Abbott says, Hospitals are too important to every community to let any hospital fail — we need every hospital.”

Some 57 million rural Americans depend on their hospital as an important source of care as well as a critical component of their area's economic and social fabric. In many areas, there is growing concern…that fabric is starting to fray.

The stresses of the past 2.5 years have affected every hospital and health system in America, none more so than rural hospitals. On this Leadership Dialogue Series podcast, AHA Board Chair Wright L. Lassiter III is joined by Dr. Julie Yaroch (Yarrow), president of ProMedica Charles and Virginia Hickman Hospital in Adrian, Michigan. Lassiter and Yaroch talk about the issues that rural hospitals continue to face, including workforce shortages, increased costs of care, and an aging population. At the same time, patients living in rural communities must navigate challenges related to accessing care, such as lack of transportation and unreliable or unavailable internet access. Yaroch says collaboration is key right now. She describes how the hospital she leads views health care as a team approach and talks about its vital role as an anchor institution in the community.

Winona Health and the Winona Wellbeing Collaborative have addressed the fragmentation and silos between local agencies and providers. Hear from Rachelle Schultz, Ed.D., CEO, Winona Health and community leaders how the Pathways Community HUB model was used as a framework in designing the Winona Community HUB to serve the unique needs of the region. A community connector from Live Well Winona tracks the progress of clients through the HUB model, which is sustained by commercial payments for completed pathways.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital solutions, including mobile health apps, patient portals and telehealth serve as a critical access point for health care providers to reach patients. However, many individuals have not been able to benefit from these digital solutions. In this podcast, Julia Resnick, director of AHA’s Strategic Initiatives is joined by Priya Bathija, vice president of AHA’s Strategic Initiatives and Sarah Swank, Counsel at Nixon Peabody. Priya and Sarah will discuss their upcoming article on digital health equity in a special edition of the American Health Law Association Journal of Health and Life Sciences Law. Here, they discuss barriers to access digital solutions and the role of health care leaders, including attorneys, in improving digital health equity.

Rural hospitals are community strongholds, serving as the key point of care for nearly 20 percent of Americans. Beyond providing healing and hope, rural hospitals nationwide are pillars of their local economies, creating essential jobs that support families and community vitality. Access to behavioral health services has been a chronic need across rural America for decades. Driven largely by shortages of clinical professionals, the demand for care has only grown during the COVID-19 pandemic. While tele-behavioral health has shown promise, much more must be done to eliminate the disparity and access to care and treatment to those who live in rural communities. On this podcast we hear from 3 leaders from across rural America who found a way, tele-health, outpatient, and inpatient, to deliver essential behavioral health services to the residents of their communities.

A confluence of economic factors have skyrocketed the cost of caring for patients and communities. In this podcast that highlights a new report from the AHA detailing these factors, Philip Pandolph, president and CEO, Meadville (PA) Medical Center and Chair of the AHA Rural Health Services Committee, explains how rising costs for supplies and equipment, drugs, and labor, along with inflation and razor thin margins has left his hospital vulnerable.

Local leaders responded to findings from the RWJF County Health Rankings and their Community Health Assessment and organized a broad-based community effort to improve the health and well-being of their population. On this episode we hear from leaders of Sky Lakes Medical Center, Healthy Klamath and Klamath Works how they combined their resources to help reverse the community’s health trajectory and become a certified Blue Zone designed to make healthy choices easier through permanent changes to a town’s environment, policy, and social networks.

In recognition of National Rural Health Day, John Supplitt, Sr. Director, AHA Rural Health Services is joined by four colleagues from AHA each of whom has a unique perspective on pathways to recovery and solutions to the challenges confronting rural health care providers and the communities they serve. Workforce, behavioral health, and maternal health are among the highest priorities of rural communities. Experts offer their insights and solutions with a special focus on the role of the hospital board in leading the effort.

On this podcast AHA offers part two of two podcasts on rebuilding maternity services at a critical access hospital. Cristen Page, M.D., executive dean of UNC School of Medicine and Jeff Strickler, CEO of Chatham Hospital UNC Health Care, Siler City discuss the business case and how the plan was fulfilled to reintroduce safe and sustainable maternity services. You may listen to Part 1 here.

In this podcast marking Mental Health Awareness Month, Shane McGuire, CEO of Columbia County Health System in Dayton, Wash., discusses the hospital district’s collaborative work with the University of Washington’s psychiatry program and its Advancing Integrated Mental Health Center, which focuses on creating care models between primary care providers and their mental health care counterparts. Listen to learn how well-conceived partnerships helped expand mental health care to this rural community by integrating physical and mental health.