For decades, the issue of rural hospital closure has been a nationwide issue long before the pandemic exposed the cracks within the fragile system.
In 2019 records were broken with 19 hospitals closing that year, bringing the decades total to 120. From an outside perspective, these closures have impacts across large portions of many states, making it so that millions of people lack access to care.
It forces people to have to drive very far for care. South Carolina, for example, is a state where some residents have to travel to a different county to receive OB/GYN care; 14 of the 46 counties as of last summer did not have an OB doctor.
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