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accessHealthNews.net
November 2021
Volume 8 | Issue No. 51
"
I just don't understand how they can just
so blatantly close the hospital. Where's the
humanity? What are people supposed to do?"
When a hospital closes, the collateral damage
is massive, with ongoing ripple effects that reach
far and wide. For the one in five Americans who
live rural, the impact is deafening. There have
been 136 rural hospital closures in the U.S. since
2010. Missouri and Kansas have each lost seven
since 2014. If you live rural, you've seen it and felt
it. If you don't, it's easy to dismiss these closures
as a rural problem.
The Where it Hurts podcast tells the story of this
collateral damage, and the tragic impact on
the people of Fort Scott, Kansas. This narrated,
award-winning podcast was featured on NPR
in 2020. The first season includes a seven-part
series chronicled by Kaiser Health News journalist,
and regular contributor to NPR's All Things
Considered, Sarah Jane Tribble. She masterfully
tells the story of what happens after a hospital
closes and how communities are left to pick up
the pieces, and in some cases, left to die.
"This means a lot to me, because as somebody
from southeastern Kansas, I wanted to make
sure that I brought the story to people in a way
they could digest and understand," Tribble said.
"Maybe you grew up in an urban area. Maybe
you have no connection with rural America
whatsoever. Maybe you don't even like the
idea of leaving the comfort of an urban setting.
But if we can bring the message to people
who maybe have no reason to be interested in
rural America, and share that message, then it
helps to build empathy. It helps people relate,
especially when you bring human voices to it."
Southeastern Kansas and Bourbon County,
where Fort Scott sits, has a high poverty rate –
with one out of four children living in poverty.
Tribble said rates of teen births, adult smoking,
unemployment, and violent crime were higher
in Bourbon County's population of 14,000 than in
other parts of the state. The uninsured rate is also
high, worsened by the fact Kansas has yet to
expand Medicaid. "University of Kansas experts
would tell me that southeastern Kansas was
one of the most troubling parts of the state of
Kansas," Tribble said, "which shocked me. As a
kid, I didn't think of where I grew up as troubling
at all. I loved it."
It was October of 2018 when Tribble found out
that Fort Scott's Mercy Hospital was closing. Not
long before that, Mercy closed its Independence
Hospital, which was about an hour and a half
away from Fort Scott. Tribble pitched the story
to her editors. There wasn't much time. Mercy
was slated to close December 30, 2018. "My
executive editor, Elisabeth Rosenthal, stopped
me in the stairwell… 'Can you get to Fort Scott
before it closes?'"
It was the beginning of December and Tribble
was headed to Kansas City. She had already
made plans to travel back home to see her sister,
Maggie, who was battling late-stage pancreatic
cancer. As she reached the tarmac in Kansas
City, she had several text messages. Maggie
was in the hospital again, this time for internal
bleeding. It was two weeks before Christmas and
near the end of Maggie's journey…
"These challenges that we're facing in rural America often have to do with
compensation, and I think that conversation, particularly at a national level,
tends to get into the weeds on compensation and how reimbursements should
work. And perhaps that's a good thing that it gets into the weeds, but at the
same time, I think there are larger solutions that could be at play…"
