Bluefield Regional Medical Center, a rural hospital in West Virginia, closed all of its services except its emergency department last week.
There are 1,821 rural hospitals in the United States. Since 2005, 172 have closed. Bluefield is the 13th rural hospital to close this year. At that pace, rural hospital closures will eclipse the high of 18 that closed in 2019.
Rural hospitals have struggled financially for nearly two decades due in part to changes in Medicare and Medicaid payment systems in the 1980s and to changes in those programs under Obamacare.
The coronavirus has only added to the difficulties by forcing rural hospitals to shut down their more profitable services.
“The reality is, when COVID came around, and we started seeing some of the ramifications in late February and early March, and then it really ramped up,” Jeffrey Lilley, chief executive officer of PCH, told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. “The elected cases stopped for everybody, and the reality is, you can’t continue to operate without some of those service lines and keep the doors open.”
According to the Chartis Center for Rural Health, 79% of rural hospital revenues come from outpatient elective procedures. At the height of the pandemic, governors in many states ordered hospitals to stop performing elective procedures.
