While a great deal of attention has been paid to the potential implications for rural hospitals of the coming $1 trillion in federal health care spending cuts over the next decade, it turns out that urban safety-net hospitals, not rural hospitals, may be even more vulnerable to the effects of these cuts.
According to an analysis by the New York Times and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, of the 109 hospitals in the country that will be most vulnerable to these cuts, 85 percent are urban safety-net hospitals and not rural hospitals.
Three factors drive this vulnerability: their service to vulnerable communities, their already-fragile finances, and their high degree of dependence on Medicaid, which pays for the care of more than 25 percent of their patients and which will suffer the greatest spending cuts.
Despite this, Congress’s attempt to ameliorate the impact of its federal spending cuts focused entirely on rural hospitals through its creation of a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. That $50 billion can only offset five percent of the cut – and none of the cut urban safety-net hospitals can expect in the coming years.
At risk for these communities these and other hospitals are high-cost, high-demand services like emergency and trauma care, obstetrics, and behavioral health services.
Despite these numbers, rural hospitals unquestionably remain highly vulnerable to the cuts to come, and many are expected to suffer and close.
Learn more about the anticipated impact of the coming federal health care spending cuts at the hospital level from the New York Times story “When the G.O.P. Medicaid Cuts Arrive, These Hospitals Will Be Hit Hardest.”