As the Rural Hospital Market Shrinks, Urgent Care Could Be the Only Hope for Quality Healthcare

Rural hospitals, by their very nature, tend to be remote outposts that serve widespread communities with few other options for immediate care. When one closes, it’s a problem—and since 2005, that problem keeps growing in severity. The market has shrunk by 183 facilities nationwide in that time span, according to a new article published by Becker’s Hospital CFO Report. Texas alone lost 23. Tennessee has 15 fewer. That’s a lot of families who can no longer run to the emergency room when someone experiences flu symptoms or has an ATV accident. Fortuitously, at the same time, urgent care continues to grow at a steady pace. As operators assess the prospect of expanding with new locations, the steadily increasing needs for quality healthcare in rural market should be considered. JUCM saw this coming, as noted in an article entitled Rural and Tertiary Markets: The Next Urgent Care Frontier. Read it to get a sense of how running an urgent care business in a rural market differs from urban and suburban operations.