Many rural residents drive almost an hour to get to a hospital for surgery, study finds

Rural Medicare patients 'typically drive 55 minutes
to a hospital.' (Adobe Stock photo)

When rural folks need surgery, long-distance drives come with the territory. "Forty-four percent of rural Medicare patients must drive an hour or more for surgery, a recent analysis finds," reports Erin Blakemore of The Washington Post. "The study shows that patients in rural areas typically drive 55 minutes to a hospital — far longer than their counterparts in more populous areas."

While rural Americans have historically struggled to have medical care access that's equal to urban residents, their plight has worsened since 2011. Blakemore explains, "The number of rural Medicare beneficiaries who traveled more than 60 minutes for their procedure rose from 36.8% in 2010 to 44.1% in 2020. . . . Among non-rural Medicare beneficiaries, travel times were lower, with a median of 20 minutes’ travel in 2010 vs. 23 minutes in 2020."

Rural hospital closures could be contributing to the problem, and "high-risk operations are increasingly centralized, the researchers note, which may have contributed to the rise in travel minutes for rural patients who must go farther for such procedures," Blakemore adds. "In a related study from the Annals of Surgery, researchers found that 98.7 million Americans — nearly 1 in 3 — lacked access to 'timely, high-quality, affordable surgical care' in 2020."

The U.S. is expected to face a nationwide surgeon shortage over the next decade, making the lack of local surgical care for rural residents an area of "growing concern," write Brittany A. Long and Michael J. Sweeney for The National Library of Medicine. "When considering the existing barriers to surgical healthcare in rural communities, there is a sense of urgency to identify innovative approaches that will promote a sustainable surgeon workforce."