When the first cases of coronavirus were announced in New Mexico on March 11, administrators at Santa Fe’s Christus St. Vincent Hospital felt prepared. As hot spots emerged from coast to coast, the 200-bed hospital -- the only full-service comprehensive care facility in the northern-central part of
The president of the hospital's clinician group, Dr. Lance Wilson, likened the process to preparing for a “mini-war.”
MORE: How accurate is the US coronavirus death count? Some experts say it's off by 'tens of thousands' Other experts are urging caution, noting that a surge of coronavirus cases in rural communities could amount to a “secondary wave.” Dr. John Brownstein, a Harvard epidemiologist and ABC News contributor, said rural areas “are definitely not out of the woods – and are in fact more vulnerable in many ways.”
"We needed to be realistic about what our situation really was," Montoya said."It wasn't what we were seeing in other countries." “We had a massive effort at converting things to video and telephone care,” Lewis said. “And that was a huge, huge undertaking.” Hughes, the North Carolina professor, warned that Williamson Memorial could be an early casualty of a troubling trend for rural hospitals. Hughes oversees program at the university that tracks rural hospital closures. In 2018, for example, 14 rural hospitals shuttered operations, according to his count – almost exclusively in the Midwest and the South. In 2019, that number was 18.
Leaders in Washington, DC, have taken notice. In the latest stimulus bill, lawmakers set aside $75 billion, in addition to $100 billion from the first $2.2 trillion CARES Act, to support struggling hospitals balance their books. The Healthcare Financial Management Association estimates $10 billion of those funds has been specifically earmarked for rural hospitals.
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