A new report says a lack of medical staff can leave rural areas without doctors, as many rural areas are not equipped to provide basic health care.
The report, which comes out of the Rural Health Services Network, a partnership between rural health providers and health organizations, finds that rural health services providers often struggle to access the services they need due to the lack of resources, and are frequently denied medical care due to a lack.
The report, called Rural Health, examines how rural health care services are fragmented across the country.
The Rural Health report looks at health services in rural areas, and what the state of rural health is.
It found that more than 10 percent of rural areas lack at least one primary care physician, with just under half of rural counties lacking at least two primary care physicians.
While rural health workers are generally able to access care through other providers, the report found that many rural health systems have difficulty obtaining adequate medical staffing.
For example, in rural counties in New York state, the lack in primary care providers in some rural areas has led to shortages in emergency room care and trauma care services.
“While it’s great to have doctors and nurses, they need to be available to those in need,” Dr. Elizabeth Linsmore, an emergency medicine physician in rural Alabama, told Business Insider.
“So when they’re not available, they are often forced to wait for an emergency room, or for trauma services.”
Linsmore said her team is seeing a rise in the need for trauma care providers.
She said she is seeing patients in the emergency room with gunshot wounds, a traumatic brain injury, or a cardiac arrest.
“There’s a lot of trauma patients that are getting into the emergency department with gunshot wound injuries,” she said.
“That’s a pretty high number for a rural area,” Linswell said.
“But we’ve got a lot more trauma patients than that.”
According to the Rural Network, there are approximately 7.2 million Americans living in rural and 4.2 billion people who are currently living in a rural county.
The average rural county population is about 1.3 people per square mile, and a total of 13 million people are currently in rural or semi-rural areas.
Dr. Lisa Gaffney, an infectious disease specialist at the University of South Florida’s Center for Rural Health and Population, said rural health needs to be prioritized.
“It’s not only our health needs that need to improve, but we also need to ensure that rural communities have access to the health care they need,” she told Business Update.
Health services are also lacking in rural communities because of a lack to access medical resources.
For example, the study found that just under 13 percent of counties lack at the time of enrollment in a primary care doctor or nurse practitioner.
In contrast, the rural health workforce is at 40 percent of the workforce in some areas.
“We need to address the problem of people having to travel long distances to get the basic medical care they’re looking for,” Linesmore said.
The report also found that rural hospitals are often not equipped with diagnostic imaging technology.
“Health care providers who have access, and who can actually diagnose and treat the most serious and common medical conditions, are often the ones who are in charge of diagnosing the most complex medical problems,” Lipswell said, adding that this could mean that doctors are less able to diagnose patients and perform procedures.
One of the key factors that can lead to the problem is lack of access to primary care care doctors.
According to the report, a lack can be exacerbated by the fact that many people who have insurance may not be able to afford the treatment.
For instance, one in three rural counties lacks a primary health care provider, and many counties do not have a primary healthcare provider for the elderly.
“There’s so much demand for primary care, that the system has to accommodate that demand,” Linaswell said.
“There’s not enough money in the budget to go out and recruit primary care doctors.”
Linesmore also noted that many of the people who need primary care have low incomes.
“People don’t necessarily have the income to go and get an appointment or an appointment, and that’s the primary issue,” she explained.
“That’s where we’re seeing the high numbers of rural patients that we see.
It’s really a lack in funding that’s causing these numbers.”