Health Affairs July 1, 2020
Editor’s Note:
The June 2020 issue of Health Affairs journal includes the article, “Varying Trends In The Financial Viability Of US Rural Hospitals, 2011–17,” by Ge Bai and colleagues. We asked the authors to put their work in the context of the current coronavirus crisis.
Approximately 30 percent of general acute care hospitals in the US are rural hospitals, serving sixty million people. Rural hospitals are relatively small (median number of beds: 25). In our recent study published in Health Affairs, we found that between 2011 and 2017, both median overall profit margins and the proportions of profitable hospitals declined for all rural hospital types except for non-profit critical access hospitals (CAHs). (CAHs are rural hospitals that have no...