The Rural Healthcare Crisis

States are spending rural health dollars on tech startups, betting that untested companies will succeed where doctors have vanished and hospitals have collapsed.

Lincoln Hospital would be the 12th rural Maine hospital in a decade to lose its labor and delivery unit.

A “Marketplace Morning Report” special reporting series on diminishing access to rural health care services, how federal policy is making it more intense, and what can be done about it.

There are about 700 hospitals at risk of closure in rural communities around the U.S. What can be done about it?

In short: Reach out to the care center closest to you ahead of time. That way if you ever come in during an emergency, they’ll already be familiar with you.

The policy is projected to have major implications for rural healthcare in particular. Here’s what we’re hearing from healthcare administrators, and how they can prepare.

Yes, there’s money on the way from the federal government. But communities and healthcare systems are also taking things into their own hands.

Medicare reimburses Alabama at the lowest rate in the nation.

Hospitals are both healthcare centers and economic hubs for rural communities.

Almost everyone in Thomasville, Alabama, has a story about how access to the local hospital — now closed — helped them in a crisis. This is Nichole Stinson’s.