A national nonprofit is working to improve access to healthcare in rural communities. The Bipartisan Policy Center is promoting the use of Telehealth Services as a means of achieving that goal.
Marilyn Serafini is Director of the Health Project at the organization.
"People are facing challenges every day. They're driving long distances to see these physicians or other clinicians, or they're not getting care at all."
She says the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the use of telehealth around the nation and supporters are working to make those changes permanent.
Earlier this year, a BPC Task Force released a report, Confronting Rural America’s Health Care Crisis, which offered policy proposals for improvements.
"During COVID-19, we have done some of that, but the changes are temporary, they either expire at the end of 2020 or at the end of the declared public health emergency and so our recommendations are for some permanent solutions."
Those solutions include loosening restrictions, expanding broadband, getting and keeping physicians in rural areas, allowing the use of paid phone health visits, text messages, and increasing behavioral health services.
Serafini adds hospital closures play a role. The BPC estimates there are 14 hospitals in Georgia at risk of closing.
An estimated 57 million people, or nearly one in five Americans, live in rural and frontier communities throughout the United States.
