Nov 28, 2017 4 min read

On Nov. 16, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was one of the 1.5 million Americans who will have a heart attack or stroke this year. He was in Austin, Texas for a meeting of the Republican Governors Association, and was rushed to the city’s Dell Seton Medical Center where he was given treatments that were uncommon decades ago but now prevent heart attacks from becoming fatal, such as a catheterization and stenting.

In the immediate aftermath, Ridge’s wife Michele thanked the first responders who quickly got her husband to the hospital and the medical staff there. She said, “I am thankful Tom was in Austin when this happened and close to world-class medical facilities.”

Many, unfortunately, don’t have Ridge’s luck. The precarious ground on which many hospitals stand in rural areas in the United States is an ongoing problem, and it endangers the health and well-being of many residents who live in areas far from urban or suburban medical centers.

About 30 million Americans live more than an hour away from a trauma care center. An analysis this summer made by CNN found that 16 percent of Americans in the lower 48 live more than 30 miles away from the nearest hospital. Since the start of the decade, about 80 rural hospitals in the United States have shuttered, and, according to the Chartis Center for Rural Health in Chicago, more than 600 are in danger of closing.

The most vulnerable hospitals are in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, including Georgia, Mississippi and Oklahoma. In Georgia, six rural hospitals have closed since 2010, and half of the state’s 73 rural hospitals could follow suit. Some of the communities in which these hospitals are located are confronting depopulation and an older, sicker population, along with the opioid epidemic. Hospitals in rural areas have ended up swimming in red ink because some of their patients can’t afford health insurance, they have plans with high deductibles or they have few affordable options on the exchanges that have been created under the Affordable Care Act.

Closer to home, Waynesburg’s hospital was in danger of closing until it was purchased by the Washington Health System in 2015.

Proximity to a hospital, of course, makes a difference when it comes to treating critical illnesses like heart attacks or strokes.

“Every minute that you can get the patient into treatment sooner will represent some brain cells that are saved,” said Jeremy Brown, the director of the National Institute of Health’s Office of Emergency Care Research, in an interview with CNN.

Setting aside the proximity of hospitals, rural Americans are already facing health challenges in comparison to their urban counterparts. A study released in January by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that rural residents were more likely to die of heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic respiratory disease and unintentional injuries than urban residents. Some of these outcomes, the CDC found, could be linked to higher rates of cigarette smoking, higher poverty rates, lower rates of physical activity and less access to health care.

When you consider that we’re just a couple of centuries removed from believing that bloodletting and leeches were cure-alls, we’re living in a golden age of medicine. Heart attacks and strokes kill fewer people than they once did, and we know much more about how they should be treated and prevented. As you read this, someone is working in a laboratory somewhere on a cure for cancer. It could be that today’s young people will be able to partake of a vaccine that will prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

But these treatments are of little value if they can’t be accessed. Keeping rural medical centers alive is a vital part of ensuring all Americans get needed health care, whether they are a former governor or not.