Eighteen rural hospitals in Georgia are at risk of closure out of 30 rural hospitals in the state according to a recent report by healthcare advisory firm Chartis. The report did not name the hospitals, but all are known as Critical Access Hospitals (CAH).
Congress created the CAH designation in 1997 in response to over 400 rural hospital closures during the 1980s and early 1990s. Half of the country’s rural hospitals are running at a loss, leading to service cuts in Georgia and other states with Texas having the most rural hospitals vulnerable to closure in the analysis, with 45, followed by Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Georgia and Mississippi.
Rural hospitals’ financial woes have been in the news for two decades, but Georgia and other U.S. states now face a choice as to the future of their states’ hospital infrastructures.
Correction issued on April 15: An earlier version of this article mistakenly used a file photo of St. Mary's Hospital in Athens, Ga. Saint Mary's is not under threat of closure. Saint Mary's is not a Critical Access Hospital and is not named in the Chartis report. In a statement from St. Mary's, hospital officials said that the facility, "reports being in solid financial condition, is not at any risk of closure and continues to expand the services and technology it provides to the community."
