Latest news with #ruralhealthcare
RNZ News
01-08-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
One year, one hospital, one community
rural farming 30 minutes ago With rural health care under the spotlight, our guest this week sheds some light on working in a small country hospital. Sophia Zohrab is among 12 med students on Auckland University's rural medicine immersion programme, sprinkled around North Island towns.
Fox News
22-07-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Scoop: Democrats launch billboards outside hospitals to target Trump for 'Gutting Rural Health Care'
FIRST ON FOX: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Tuesday launched billboards outside three rural hospitals that Democrats say are closing or cutting back services due to President Donald Trump's recently signed domestic policy package. The DNC says it placed billboards in Silex, Missouri; Stillwell, Oklahoma; and Missoula, Montana, to make sure that rural voters, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in last year's presidential election, "know who is responsible for gutting rural health care." The Democrats' national party committee, in taking aim at the sweeping and controversial tax cut and spending measure, named the "One Big Beautiful Bill" by Trump and congressional Republicans, argued that "residents are already seeing the firsthand effects of Trump's Budget Betrayal." The billboards were shared first with Fox News Digital on Tuesday morning. The measure is stuffed full of Trump's 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. It includes extending the president's signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. By making his first-term tax rates permanent — they were set to expire later this year — the bill will cut taxes by nearly $4.4 trillion over the next decade, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The measure also provides billions for border security and codifies the president's controversial immigration crackdown. The $3.4 trillion legislative package is also projected to surge the national debt by $4 trillion over the next decade, but many Republicans dispute the projection by the Congressional Budget Office. And the new law also restructures Medicaid — the almost 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans. The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation's major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump's tax cuts. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulations, including work requirements for many of those seeking Medicaid coverage. Democrats, for months, have repeatedly blasted Republicans over the social safety net changes. And they spotlighted a slew of national polls last month and this month that indicate the bill's popularity in negative territory. The DNC claims that the bill, which Trump signed into law on July 4 after the GOP-controlled House and Senate narrowly passed the measure along near-party-line votes, will gut Medicaid, forcing rural hospitals and nursing homes to close their doors. "Rural hospitals were already on the brink of collapse thanks to Donald Trump, but now he has put the last nail in the coffin for rural hospitals with his billionaire budget bill," DNC chair Ken Martin argued in a statement to Fox News. Martin highlighted that "in states across the country, hospitals are either closing their doors or cutting critical services, and it's Trump's own voters who will suffer the most. This is what Donald Trump does — screw over the people who are counting on him." Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Whatley, in an interview with Fox News Digital last week, spotlighted that "if you take a look at the Medicaid side of this conversation, the fact is that we're going to be moving illegal aliens off of Medicaid. We're going to be strengthening the program. Those are things that absolutely need to happen." And he argued that "the tax cuts are going to be very, very strong indicators, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Plus we're extending those Trump tax cuts. This is going to help every family in every community all across the country." Included in the megabill is a $60 billion fund, named the Rural Health Transformation Program, which Republicans say would offset cuts to Medicaid and would also help overcome long-standing health disparities that rural communities have faced. But the DNC says their new analysis "shows this funding was never going to be enough to make a difference." And the DNC points to a non-partisan breakdown of the new law, which says that half of the rural hospital funding will be split evenly among all states that apply, regardless of need. Both parties see the "big, beautiful bill" as a key part of their messaging heading into next year's midterm elections, when the Republicans will be defending their slim majorities in the House and Senate.
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
No one knows whether Trump's $50B for rural health will be enough
A ranch owner brings in a load of hay from her ranch in Texas in 2024. Experts and lawmakers worry a new $50 billion program designed to help struggling rural health care providers may not be enough to offset federal funding losses. (Photo by) Congress set aside $50 billion for rural hospitals and medical providers to allay fears over the billions more in historic cuts to federal health care spending that President Donald Trump signed into law on Independence Day. But is that bandage big enough to save struggling rural hospitals? 'I have more questions than I have answers,' said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, a nonprofit policy group. 'No one has those answers yet.' Morgan noted that the new money for rural health, to be spent over five years, is far less than the $155 billion in rural Medicaid spending cuts over 10 years, as estimated by KFF, a nonprofit health policy and research group. Experts, hospital leaders and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle fear that Trump's signature legislation will particularly gut rural hospitals and clinics, which see an outsize share of patients who are insured through Medicaid, the federal-state public health insurance for people with low incomes. The new law slashes more than $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years to help pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. States scramble to shield hospitals from GOP Medicaid cuts The $50 billion addition was an effort by Republican leaders in Congress to win the votes of colleagues within their party who initially balked at supporting such steep cuts to Medicaid and other health services. In the U.S. Senate, the rural program helped secure the vote of Alaska moderate Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who expressed concern about the law's impact on health care in her state. About 1 in 3 Alaskans are insured through Medicaid. Jared Kosin, the president and CEO of the Alaska Hospital & Healthcare Association, said he's deeply frustrated with the new law's gutting of Medicaid funding, which he thinks will wreak lasting damage on Alaskans. And Republicans sidestepped potential solutions by just throwing money into a program, he said. 'It's frustrating in the public realm when decisions like this are made fast and, frankly, carelessly,' he said. 'The consequences are going to fall on us, not them.' More than half of the law's cuts to funding in rural areas are concentrated in 12 states with large rural populations that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to cover more people, according to KFF: Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Some GOP lawmakers in Congress have heralded the $50 billion rural program as a health care victory. But it's still unclear which hospitals, clinics and other providers would receive money and how much. The Rural Health Transformation Program will dole out $10 billion annually from fiscal years 2026 through 2030. States must apply for their funding by the end of this year, submitting a detailed plan on how it would be used. The law outlines some ways that states can use the money, according to an analysis of the legislation from the Bipartisan Policy Center: Making payments to rural hospitals to help them maintain essential services such as emergency room care or labor and delivery. Recruiting and training rural doctors, nurses and other health workers. Bolstering emergency medical services such as ambulances and EMTs. Using new technologies, including telehealth. Providing opioid use disorder treatment and mental health services. Improving preventive care and chronic disease management. Half of the $10 billion each year will be distributed evenly across states that have applied for it. The other half can be distributed by the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — currently Dr. Mehmet Oz — at his discretion, based on a state's rural population and rural health facilities. Although the program doesn't replace the amount states are likely to lose, Morgan said it's still an opportunity to rethink how rural health care is funded. He'd like to see states given flexibility in how they're able to use the funds, and he hopes they focus on keeping rural communities healthy through preventive care while still helping hospitals keep their doors open. 'If done correctly, it could really change the future course for rural America,' Morgan said. 'That is such a tough ask, though.' Kentucky could take the biggest hit from the new law's reduction in rural Medicaid funding, losing an estimated $12 billion over 10 years, according to a KFF analysis. Tracking Medicaid patients' work status may prove difficult for states The state's Medicaid department is still waiting for additional federal guidance to understand how the state's program will be affected, Kendra Steele, spokesperson with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, told Stateline in a statement. 'Over 1.4 million Kentuckians rely on Medicaid — including half of all children in our state, seniors and more vulnerable populations — and the passage of legislation on the federal level will have serious impacts for those individuals, rural health care and hospitals and local economies,' she wrote. Even with the new program, states across the country will have to reevaluate their budgets in light of the cuts, said Hemi Tewarson, executive director at the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan group that supports states in developing health care policies. 'Every region is slightly different and there's not a one-size-fits-all approach,' she said. 'Hospital ownership varies [as well as] the types of services that are critical for the community where they're located. They have to think about new ways to provide those services in a context with fewer resources.' About 44% of rural hospitals are operating in the red, according to a KFF analysis of Rand Hospital Data, a higher share than the 35% of hospitals in urban areas. Prior to the bill's passage, Oz attempted to reassure U.S. House Republicans that their districts could get money from the program even if they weren't specifically rural, Politico reported earlier this month. We're all rural at heart when it comes to money. – Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan said money would begin flowing to his district as early as the beginning of next year, telling the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader earlier this month that he met with Trump, Oz and others to secure pledges that hospitals in his district could access the fund. He represents the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, which includes suburban and rural areas, as well as the cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Though the legislation includes guidelines on which facilities or areas qualify as 'rural,' Morgan, of the National Rural Health Association, expects a mad dash from lawmakers and providers to claim rural status in order to get a piece of the funding. 'That's going to be a huge issue — defining who's rural,' Morgan said. 'We're all rural at heart when it comes to money.' Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Solve the daily Crossword
CTV News
16-07-2025
- Health
- CTV News
Sask. NDP says rural residents not well informed of nearby ER closures
WATCH: The Saskatchewan NDP is calling on the provincial government to improve how people are notified when an emergency room closes in rural areas.
CBC
14-07-2025
- Health
- CBC
'Keep the doors open': As ERs close, doctor speaks out on the challenges of practising in rural Sask.
The senior lead physician of a Saskatchewan Medical Association program that provides help for rural doctors is speaking out on the challenges they face, after a number of temporary rural emergency room closures forced by a shortage of medical professionals in the province. "We tend to get the feeling that from an emergency perspective … the importance is placed on just keeping the door open, not necessarily, you know, keeping the door open when we are adequately staffed," Dr. Francois Reitz said in an interview Tuesday, as he was coming off a 24-hour emergency room shift. Reitz works with the medical association's rural relief program, which provides short-term locum relief to general and family doctors working in rural communities with fewer than five practising physicians. The workload for health-care workers in rural areas has increased from when he first started with the program 20 years ago, he said, including greater demand from patients as health conditions have become more complex. At the same time, there is a shortage of health-care workers in rural areas. "It's not just physician shortages that we're seeing," Reitz said. "My nursing colleagues, my pharmacy colleagues, my lab techs, etc. — there's a shortage of everybody." That's resulted in many rural health-care workers who are on call "every single day," he said, which means they struggle with work-life balance or may have to reduce services. When somebody calls in sick, there's often nobody to replace them, Reitz said. "I need certain things to be able to deal with the heart attack or if there's a motor vehicle accident," he said. "If I don't have those resources available to me, I cannot do the best that I can from a rural perspective. And rural, classically, we deal with fewer resources that we have to juggle." The expectation to "keep the doors open" for health services like emergency rooms can compromise the quality of care for patients, which is top of mind for doctors, said Reitz. "Our concerns are more about not being able to provide that quality of care," he said. "When one hasn't had sleep or [doesn't] have enough staff, what is slipping through the cracks?" Shortage has been approaching for years Reitz said the current doctor shortage is not a complete surprise. He said by 2018-19, it was known the field would run into a "mass retiring of doctors," due to the number of baby boomers working at that time. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which was both a wake-up call and catalyst for the health-care system, he said. "I think it highlighted a lot of weaknesses within our health-care system, both with current planning and future management," said Reitz. Many health-care workers also started to reassess their roles within the system and opted for better work-life balance, leading some to restrict their practices. Residents and leaders in some rural Saskatchewan communities have started to speak out about the shortage of doctors, and how many resign early. That comes down to a few factors, said Reitz. As the population grows, the province is not producing enough physicians to replace those who leave the field, he said. Instead, Reitz said Canada has relied heavily on international medical graduates — he was recruited from South Africa just over 20 years ago. "You are more likely to find an international medical graduate in rural Saskatchewan than you are to find a Canadian graduate," he said. Typically, a rural doctor will do a roughly five-year term, Reitz said. But as recruitment relies more heavily on international doctors, there seems to be fewer who stay in rural areas long-term. For those from some religious or cultural backgrounds, it can be hard to access community, traditional foods or religious services in rural areas, he said. "Saskatchewan has traditionally been very, very difficult for international medical graduates who are not of a Christian or atheist background," Reitz said. Many come to realize they would be "happier, healthier and in a better financial state after a year … moving anywhere else, whether it's centrally or out of province," he said. Pay is another factor in turnover, with the compensation not always matching the long hours rural physicians are expected to work, said Reitz. "Being a physician is not the high-paying job that it used to be 20 or 30 years ago," he said. "But then again, how do you sell to the public that a doctor is not being adequately paid? This is something which both culturally, as well as historically, is a very difficult argument to make." 'We have a lot of interest' The head of the Saskatchewan Healthcare Recruitment Agency says it works with international applicants to try to ease the transition. "Once we are aware of an applicant, we start working with them to understand where they were educated, what their currency or practice is, if they would be new to Canada," said chief executive officer Terri Strunk. The provincial agency's role is to reach out to medical residents and graduates locally, nationally and globally to try to find physicians, she said. There are many qualifications that have to be met through the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the national regulatory body, she said. Once a doctor is deemed eligible, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Health Authority work to determine which vacancy they could fill, said Strunk. The province offers competitive incentives and opportunities to doctors, and "we have a lot of interest in Saskatchewan because of the nature of our physician workforce here," she said. "They want to make that decision, and then what's the fastest way I can get there." With that, there needs to be consideration for international workers around where they should be located and how they can best be prepared to practise there, said Strunk. "Practising in a rural area of Saskatchewan is different from practising in one of our rural centres," she said. "You might have a physician, you know, practising in a remote or rural community of Saskatchewan that may have never seen … an agricultural accident before." The recruitment agency has worked hard over the last year to share information with communities about which factors influence retention of health-care workers in rural and remote areas, said Strunk. "Communities are the first to want to keep their health facilities open — they want to keep their doctors there, but oftentimes they don't know what they don't know," she said. "They may not realize that … [doctor] might be feeling socially isolated, or perhaps the spouse hasn't been able to find work." The agency is also looking at what has worked for communities that have good retention, and sharing that with others through a health-care tool kit. "It's just also about making sure that we, as a recruitment agency … and the employer at the Saskatchewan Health Authority and that community know who that physician is, what their needs are, as much as we can," Strunk said.
