rural hospitals

In many rural towns, local hospitals are community fixtures. When they close, the entire community feels the ripple effects.

Over the past decade, more than 100 hospitals in rural parts of America — including at least 20 in the Midwest — have closed.In some cases, the shuttered…

Iowa is among the states with the fewest COVID-19 cases, but it still has over 175 confirmed cases and the total increases every day. The state’s…

Nine months ago, things were looking bleak for Hillsboro Community Hospital, a 15-bed facility in central Kansas about 50 miles north of Wichita. The…

On a sunny afternoon in Sedalia, Mo., a town between St. Louis and Kansas City, Jennifer and Matt Boatright escorted some unusual visitors into a pasture…

Side Effects Public Media and KBIA reporter Bram Sable-Smith has just received a 2018 Edward R. Murrow Award for his continuing coverage of the issues…

Taja Welton is ready for her daughter to be born. She’s moved into a bigger house, one with room for a nursery. She has a closet full of pink, Minnie…

Brianna Foster, 23, lives minutes away from Genesis Hospital, the main source of health care and the only hospital with maternity services in southeastern…

When the hospital closed in rural Ellington, Missouri, a town of about 1,000, the community lost its only emergency room, too. That was 2016. That same…

It’s a familiar story in rural America. Four years ago the Pemiscot County hospital, the lone public hospital in Missouri’s poorest county, nearly closed.…