How the pandemic killed a record number of rural hospitals

Early in the pandemic – through April 2020 – Randolph County, Georgia had the state’s highest rate of Covid-19 cases.   Yet in October, in the middle of a global pandemic, Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center announced it would be closing.   Even before the pandemic, rural hospitals faced significant financial uncertainty. Relative to urban areas, the roughly 61 million Americans who live in rural areas have a higher rate of poverty, unemployment and are more likely to be uninsured. These communities are shrinking, and fewer patients means less money coming into rural hospitals.   If fewer patients have insurance, that typically means hospitals must cover a lot of uncompensated care. Even if a patient has Medicare or Medicaid, hospitals aren’t paid as much as they would be with a privately insured patient; private insurers pay nearly double what Medicare pays for all hospital services.   Rural hospitals like the one in Randolph County operate on razor thin margins and didn’t have reserves to handle the pandemic’s unplanned expenses. More than 180 rural hospitals have closed since 2005. Closures were already occurring at an accelerated rate over the last decade, and now 21 have shut down since the start of the pandemic.   They won’t be the last.