Rural Hospitals

Some policymakers and health advocates say Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” could be “devastating” to thousands of Missourians who rely on Medicaid and live in rural communities.

A July report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, a national policy group, found that 19 of Missouri’s 57 rural hospitals are at risk of shuttering because of “serious financial problems.”

When the Audrain Community Hospital closed, it left uncertainty and difficult choices in its wake.

Taja Welton is ready for her daughter to be born. She’s moved into a bigger house, one with room for a nursery. She has a closet full of pink, Minnie...

As he fights to retain control of Putnam County Memorial Hospital in Unionville, Missouri, Jorge Perez’s woes continue to pile up at other rural...

When the hospital closed in rural Ellington, Missouri, a town of about 1,000, the community lost its only emergency room, too. That was 2016. That same...

It’s a familiar story in rural America. Four years ago the Pemiscot County hospital, the lone public hospital in Missouri’s poorest county, nearly...

No one at the hospital in Fulton, Missouri (population 12,790) had ever heard of a management consultant named Jorge Perez until he showed up at its...

When Sarah Scantling went into labor this summer, she had to drive 30 miles and across state lines. Three years earlier, the only maternity ward where...

For the hundreds of rural hospitals struggling to stay in business, health policy decisions made in Washington D.C. this summer could make survival a...