Rural hospitals in a bind, panel told

UAMS chief says hard-to-get health workers part of issue

A declining population of potential patients and difficulty recruiting doctors, nurses and other health care professionals are among the challenges the state’s rural hospitals face, hospital officials told a legislative committee Thursday.

Addressing the Legislative Council’s Hospital and Medicaid Study Subcommittee, Cam Patterson, chancellor of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, noted that 39 of the state’s 75 counties have just one hospital, and 28 don’t have one at all.

He credited the state’s decision to expand Medicaid in 2014 with staving off a wave of rural hospital closures, such as ones that affected surrounding states that did not expand Medicaid.

“If a similar wave were to break in the state of Arkansas, it would literally break the back of health care in the state,” Patterson said.

The subcommittee’s House chairman, Rep. Fred Love, D-Little Rock, said the meeting was the first in a series that the group will have on health care in rural areas.

“We want to focus on rural health because we did not focus very much on rural health during the 92nd General Assembly,” Love said, referring to the legislative session that ended in April.

The issue affects residents’ health as well as their economic well-being, since hospitals are often one of a community’s biggest employers, he said.

The difficulties that rural hospitals face were highlighted earlier this year when Sevier County’s only hospital, De Queen Medical Center, closed after the financial collapse of its Missouri parent company, EmpowerHMS.

Last month, Conway Regional Medical Center took control of Dardanelle Hospital and River Valley Medical Center, which had been described by its board as being in fiscal distress under its previous owner, Allegiance Health Management of Shreveport.

Patterson said a lack of access to health care providers is “probably the overwhelming factor” explaining why Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states on measures of health outcomes.

One way UAMS is trying to help is by providing rural hospitals with access to its specialists through telemedicine.

The state also needs to “dramatically increase the number of health care professionals that we train in the state,” he said.

Phillip Gilmore, chief executive of Ashley County Medical Center in Crossett, said his hospital has had success in recruiting physicians, but is constantly searching for nurses and other health care professionals.

“We’ve been looking for two physical therapists now for a long time, and we can’t find some who will come to a rural area,” he said.