4 things you should know about Tennessee’s struggling rural hospitals
Across Tennessee, 61 hospitals help keep small towns healthy and bustling through access to a variety of health care services and salaries. The hospitals have a combined economic impact of $994.7 million and support 15,654 jobs, according to the Tennessee Hospital Association.
Many of the facilities, and smaller communities, are struggling amid a confluence of factors, including changes in how hospitals are reimbursed, expensive technology and challenges in physician recruitment. Since 2013, eight hospitals have closed or drastically changed their services.
1. 15 of the 61 are critical access hospitals.
“Critical access hospital” is a special designation for hospitals that has to be approved by the Tennessee Department of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Hospitals have to have fewer than 25 inpatient beds and make sure the average stay is no longer than 96 hours.
2. Not all of the hospitals have labor and delivery departments.
There were 12,224 babies born in rural hospitals in 2015. Five of the facilities registered one birth even though there is no labor unit.
3. They provide a lot of emergency care.
There were 980,808 emergency room visits at the 61 hospitals combined in 2015.
In towns such as Brownsville, where the local hospital closed, ambulances become de-facto mobile clinics in addition to running longer routes transporting people to emergency rooms.
4. Rural hospitals are among the largest employers in the
The payroll associated with the 61 hospitals totals more than $791 million annually. In Hancock County, which is one of the least wealthy counties in the state, the hospital employed 34 people who earned $1.7 million in income in 2015, per THA. The county had 6,572 residents the same year.