'It's worse than murder': how rural America became a hospital desert

[Demovictory9]

Since 2010, 53 rural hospitals have closed – many in counties with poverty rates higher than average – leaving residents in need stranded

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When Vidant Health, a $1.6bn non-profit medical consortium which owns all of the other hospitals in this region, purchased Pungo district hospital in 2011 and determined that it was losing money, few here were surprised. But when Vidant announced Pungo’s closure in 2013, it started a bitter four-year conflict that spurred protests, marches to the nation’s capital, NAACP intervention and lawsuit upon lawsuit.

“It’s worse than murder,” Adam O’Neal says, standing over his kitchen sink deveining shrimp. “Everybody who needs emergency care and is dying is being murdered by Vidant.”

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On Father’s Day last year, a two-year-old boy with a mop of black hair was playing in his yard in Hyde county when a copperhead snake slithered out from under a toy car and bit him. His mom, Hannah Berry, sped 20 miles to the clinic. Staff there told her to drive to Washington, and staff there ordered an airlift to Greenville. Finally, after two car rides and a flight, the boy received anti-venom. It was at least two hours after he started screaming, Hannah recalls.

Last July, Latoya Chase took her elderly mother to the clinic with chest pains. When Chase went inside for help, “they told me that I needed to call 911,” she says. She called, and they waited in the parking lot for paramedics. Chase’s mother survived – doctors found blood clots, not a heart attack – but Chase remains furious. “Going there is a waste of time,” she says of the clinic.

Sally Holton, an 89-year-old retired schoolteacher, went to the clinic with breathing problems in 2016 and says doctors called hospitals in Washington and Greenville. Neither had room. They sent her farther west, to a Vidant-owned hospital about 75 miles west of Belhaven.

“I have been in a mess without the hospital,” Holton says. “I’ve just been handicapped.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/25/north-carolina-rural-hospitals-closing-vidant-health

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Demovictory

[gratuitous]

3. If only there were a political party that cared about access to health care

But at least we don't have socialized medicine! Americans would rather die than put up with that. And so we do.

[bornfree17]

6. sadly you are correct

I don't see any changes coming soon

[tazkcmo]

4. I agree our rural communities

Need better infrastructure like hospitals, internet and public transportation. Having said that, the one thing I hear the most from residents in these communities as the reason for living where they live is the isolation and escape from The Big City.

You can't move out to the middle of nowhere and then complain that there are no services. It reminds me of the people that buy homes in new developments bordered by ranches filled with livestock about the smell of manure.

[Demovictory9]

9. but the people in this article had a hospital.

[smirkymonkey]

5. Keep voting republican.

That will solve all your problems.

Maybe you should worry more about getting your basic needs met and less about screwing over brown people and liberals.

[DBoon]

7. They'd rather die than vote Democratic

sadly, their wish is being granted

[Horse with no Name]

10. I live in an area such as this

When I worked at the local hospital, many of the nurses spat venom because so many people had Medicaid. It was awful.
After Texas cut Medicaid so badly, the hospital ended up closed.
Sadly they don’t have a clue that Medicaid is a payor. And it helps pay the salary. They couldn’t see past their hate.

[smirkymonkey]

11. How sad. People just can't see the big picture, can they?

Their petty prejudices always get in the way of the greater good.

[Duppers]

12. And I bet these nurses called themselves Christian.

Their lives are void of compassion and empathy.

[juxtaposed]

8. the ACA was fixing this problem before dip shit got elected

Is dip shit one word?

[Lee-Lee]

13. In both those cases listed the people caused part of the delay

When you have someone with a snake bite you don’t take them in a clinic or doctors office in your own car.

You dial 911 and get paramedics on scene and let them begin patient care on the scene and let them make the decision on what facility to directly send them to.

In the case of the snake bite that was eventually flown they almost certainly would have instead flown them directly from the scene, resulting in much faster care. Instead they drove them to one facility untrained and unequipped to handle the case who directed them to another facility unable they handle the case.

Same goes for chest pains. Don’t drive someone to the hospital or even worse to a clinic or doctors office. Call 911 and get the paramedics there.

Medical intervention and treatment begins when the Paramedics get there. They don’t just drive you in. They evaluate the patient and have a whole host of drugs and other lifesaving interventions they can begin on the spot if needed, so every minute you spend transporting them in a private auto is a minute they are delayed actual treatment. There are some rare exceptions, but very rare. The patient on an ambulance in 5 minutes and at the hospital in 15 is virtually always better than the patient at the hospital in 10 minutes via POV.

And taking the patient to the wrong facility just makes things even worse. The paramedics know what the right place to go to the first time is.