The South's Rural Healthcare Crisis

[dbackjon]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hospital-cri ... 16288.html

If you want to watch a rural community die, kill its hospital.

After the Lower Oconee Community Hospital shut down in June 2014, other mainstays of the community followed. The bank and the pharmacy in the small town of Glenwood shuttered. Then the only grocery store in all of Wheeler County closed in the middle of August this year.

On Glenwood’s main street, building after building is now for sale, closing, falling apart or infested with weeds growing through the foundation’s cracks.

Opportunity has been dying in Wheeler County for the last 20 years. Agriculture was once the primary employer, but the Wheeler Correctional Facility, a privately run prison, is now the biggest source of jobs. With 39 percent of the central Georgia county’s population living in poverty, there aren’t enough patients with good insurance to keep a hospital from losing money.

[dbackjon]

The reasons are complex, woven into the fabric of a changing economy and an evolving health care system. But these rural hospital closures are hitting the southern United States the hardest.

“The Southeast of the U.S. is where things are going horribly wrong. You’ve got higher levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension ― you pick up any health disparity or measure and it’s there,” Morgan said. “And again this is where now we are shutting down rural hospitals.”

[dbackjon]

[dbackjon]

[CAA Flagship]

Makes sense. Rural hospitals are located where people live.

[Pwns]

Let those Trump-voting cretins rot.

[OL FU]

They need to move to greenville. Only 45 minutes away

[Ibanez]

Ever been to Oconoee? Better off going to a horse vet

[houndawg]

Let those Trump-voting cretins rot.

Tell them Obama did it.

[Baldy]

Makes sense. Rural hospitals are located where people live.

I mean, really...

Almost literally, nobody lives there. Nobody.

Aside from the population centers around Savannah, Albany, Valdosta, and Brunswick, the inland parts of south Georgia is very sparsely populated. Unless it's heavily subsidized, many of those smaller communities just can't support a fully functioning hospital.

[mrklean]

Speaking as a Southerner, we need to make better health choices. We fry everything. I know fried foods are so freaking good, but it is killing us. We need to good to the doctor more often and walk at least 3x per week.-----------------> Gets off soap box.