U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, speaks on Thursday, May 16, 2024, at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on rural health care. (Screenshot)
Rural hospitals and clinics across the U.S., including in Oregon, face economic headwinds as they struggle to meet the medical needs of people who live in remote regions with limited choices for care.
Last August, Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Baker City cited financial problems in shutting down its birth center in eastern Oregon. It was the only maternity ward in a county with nearly 17,000 people and had served the area for 100 years. The move has forced expectant mothers to travel an extra 45 miles to Grande Ronde Hospital in La Grande, a treacherous if not impossible drive during wintertime.
Rural hospitals are often the only outposts of medical care in many communities, offering an array of essential services like delivering babies, emergency medical care and surgeries.
Yet more than half of rural hospitals in the U.S. operate in the red. At the same time, larger health care corporations are gobbling up small hospitals that have operated for decades. That can put much of the decision-making power about what services to offer – or halt – in the hands of executives who live far away and who are focused on the bottom line rather than the needs of those communities.