Rural Healthcare Access

Various barriers to healthcare access impact rural communities such as lack of public transportation

combined with increased distances to health services, lack of cell service and internet access, and fewer

healthcare providers compared to urban environments. Due to lower population density in rural regions,

healthcare centers are often located in centralized areas. This can result in lengthy travel times required for

doctors’ visits. In addition, these areas do not typically have consistent or reliable public transportation.

These factors can lead to patients choosing to go for longer periods without seeking medical attention or

only going in the case of emergencies. Over the past few years, especially since the start of COVID-19,

telehealth services have grown in use and quality. Unfortunately, there are still large areas of the country

that do not have access to cell service and/or internet connection. While telehealth seems like it could be a

solution to the lack of transportation in rural communities, it can often further the disparity in access.

Lastly, all of these issues are coupled with a lack of interest among healthcare providers to establish clinics

and services in rural areas. There are countless reasons why providers do not seek out rural health. A few of

these reasons include not having enough patients to support their practice, low economic return, limited

resources, and increased workload. All of these factors contribute to barriers to rural healthcare access but

represent just a fraction of the issues faced by these regions. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

These Kids Are Too Expensive

As someone who's interested in women's health and fascinated by labor and delivery, I have a lot of mom and baby-related recommended posts on my social media feeds. More recently, I've been coming across Instagram posts where American mothers share their outrageous hospital bills after having a baby and compare the costs to countries with universal healthcare. Even the television series The Office touches on this, with Pam trying to "hold in" her baby girl till midnight because her health insurance only covers a two night stay at the hospital. In 2022, the average cost for having a baby in America was $18,865 (without insurance). If you are having a cesarian section, you can expect to pay closer to $26,000. These prices are exorbitant compared to somewhere like the Netherlands, for instance, where in 2017 it cost an average of $3,600 to have a baby via standard delivery. For those in the US who have health insurance, costs are greatly reduced, but with roughly 26 ...
Read more

What even is insurance?

  What even is insurance? As a young child still under the age of 26, I still have a lot to learn. I was even told I needed to ask an adult before using the blog site. As a result, I still don’t know a ton about the inner workings of insurance or how to use it effectively. When I moved to Michigan for school, I put off finding new healthcare providers for quite awhile because the prospect of trying to find providers covered under my parents’ insurance seemed too daunting. It can be surprising to find out how much my doctor’s appointments are after each visit as well. To me, copays never seem consistent, and they don’t often make sense. I am certainly not looking forward to navigating choosing what insurance to go with when I get kicked off my parents’ insurance.               I’m still confused about many aspects of the US healthcare system, and I’m learning to be a part of it. We even had a class that taught us abo...
Read more