Rural hospitals and healthcare providers are constantly facing new challenges as the healthcare industry changes and as regulations shift.

While much of the funding for rural hospitals comes through the federal government, state legislatures also play a key role in funding, supporting and safeguarding their rural hospitals. So, how do rural hospitals ensure their needs are prioritized in the state budget and through state law?

Rural hospitals are often praised for their personalized approach of neighbors caring for neighbors, but along with the rest of the healthcare industry, rural providers are not immune to the increasingly less human-centered care that we sometimes see today.

Rural hospitals have faced significant financial strain to the point of closure for more than 140 hospitals since 2010. Additionally, we are seeing many others facing a high and/or immediate risk of closing in the near future.

This week, JJ and Rachel continue their discussion on how the pandemic impacted individuals with disabilities with Michigan Supreme Court Justice, Richard Bernstein.

COVID-19 has had significant impacts on all sectors of the population for the past three years, but has created particular challenges for those with disabilities who use hearing and touch as communication.

In rural healthcare, it is essential to have support advocating for your needs and developing policies that are helpful to rural hospitals while influencing policies that could be hurtful instead.

Connections between rural hospitals and state wide advocacy organizations that can represent them is crucial to hospital success, and even at times, their survival.

Rural hospitals are often overshadowed or misjudged due to data collection techniques, metric designs that automatically disadvantage rural hospitals with smaller numbers, and the lack of concern for the subsequent misleading results.

Today, we zero in on how rural hospitals can deal with the growing complexity of the regulatory environment.

Gaining community support through fundraising can be difficult for rural hospitals thanks to limited time, resources, and personnel dedicated to this effort.

This week, JJ and Rachel continue in part 2. of our discussion about the importance of strategic planning.

This week in part 1, JJ and Rachel sit down to talk about the importance of strategic planning.

This week, we continue the discussion on the value rural hospitals bring when partnering with larger systems and organizations.

We've talked before about how healthcare partnerships are critical to rural hospitals, but these partnerships are also beneficial to the organizations that we are joining forces with.

This week, we get into the challenges rural hospitals face as they implement their own infection control programs, and how those programs have changed and adapted in response to the pandemic as well as preparing for future outbreaks.

Connecting with federal government decision makers is an important t part of rural hospital advocacy efforts. But without a Washington DC base, it's not easy to cultivate those relationships.

As rural hospitals work to provide the best quality of care for their patients, while maintaining financial solvency, programs like 340B can help make drugs more affordable.

Last week we discussed the myriad of headlines relating to financial losses hospitals are facing across the country. Since then we've seen even more headlines on hospitals posting significant financial losses.

JJ and Rachel sit down to talk about the healthcare industry's aftershocks coming on after the pandemic.

Today we are talking big picture about the role nurse practitioners play in our total continuum of care

The patient experience is not a new topic for healthcare, for rural hospitals or even for this podcast. But it’s so central to what we do and it’s a little unique in the rural environment.

This week, JJ and Rachel sit down to talk about mergers, acquisitions and the consolidation of healthcare services in America.

We talk about healthcare policy often, and when we talk about long-term financial stability for rural hospitals, we’re usually talking about federal policy as it relates to reimbursements, payment structures, etc. But state-level healthcare policy also has a significant impact on rural hospitals.