In case you missed it, a new analysis demonstrates the critical role hospitals play in protecting access to healthcare in rural communities, including those with the most vulnerable patients. The findings reveal how hospitals serve as lifelines for rural communities, covering existing gaps in care by reinvesting in hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) and alleviating pressure on physician practices that might otherwise be forced to close their doors.
The new analysis from the American Hospital Association (AHA) provides the latest evidence that while hospitals’ top priority is providing high-quality care for patients, corporate insurance companies are focused on banking record profits at patients’ expense.
- Hospitals are two and a half times more likely than corporate insurance companies and other entities to invest in physician practices in rural communities. Compared with corporate insurers, hospitals are making far stronger investments in physicians practices in smaller, lower income communities. Without this critical support from hospitals, rural patients’ needs may not be met.
- “Commercial insurers in particular are overwhelmingly focused on larger, more profitable markets, where the financial upside is greater.” The analysis reveals that “[m]edian household income was on average 18.4 percent higher in counties where insurers acquired physician practices compared to counties where hospitals acquired physician groups.” Hospitals also continue to invest in small communities in need, whereas “the county-level population where commercial insurers acquired physician practices was on average 61.4 percent larger than it was for hospitals.”
- Hospitals are listening to patients in rural communities and investing in the sites of care they need most. Rural communities disproportionately seek care from HOPDs. In fact, “for patients from counties where 90 percent or more of the population lives in a rural area, 36 percent of physician visits are provided through an HOPD.” In contrast, HOPDs in the least rural counties provide 25 percent of physician visits.
- Hospitals are also an essential source of care for many of the most vulnerable patients: individuals who are dually eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, also known as duals. In part due to their more complex clinical needs, these patients rely more heavily on “HOPDs for outpatient care than non-duals, receiving 40 percent of visits through an HOPD compared to 32 percent among non-duals.”
Hospitals are working to protect rural communities’ access to high-quality healthcare as, investing in critical sites of care that also treat a disproportionately high share of patients with complex conditions. The cuts to hospital care being pushed for by corporate insurance companies and other powerful special interests would jeopardize rural patients’ access to care.