Despite the challenges, there remains hope for rural healthcare, and the preservation of Rural and Critical Access Hospitals. Rural and Critical Access Hospitals have noteworthy advantages that can be leveraged to navigate the path to longevity and growth:

 

• Rural and Critical Access Hospitals are by nature significantly smaller than large tertiary centers, and as such, they have a remarkable ability to be agile and adaptive.  

• Rural and Critical Access Hospitals also know their patient populations well, and can more efficiently assess their community needs and the most cost effective way to address them.  

• On the other side of that coin, the community knows their local hospital. When the Rural or Critical Access Hospital becomes consumer focused, the community responds, outmigration diminishes, and public and taxpayer support of the hospital in solidified. 

• In the modern era, and amplified in the Post-Covid healthcare environment, the challenges of recruiting critical talent can now, to some degree, be attenuated through the robust development of virtual means to distribute talent from more densely populated regions to those of greatest need, and at a more affordable cost. 

• Given the growing State and National level of concern for the rate of Rural and Critical Access Hospital closures, additional resources are being committed to working with rural communities to find solutions. 

 

ACPHealth is laser focused on transforming the most essential services of Rural and Critical Access Hospitals into a right sized and viable service within the community.  We are the experts in “front door” transformation born from decades of simplifying and optimizing the complex and unpredictable world of that first encounter in acute care.

 

Contact us to learn how ACPHealth can help your Rural or Critical Access Hospital transform into the Community Hero it can be!