Dive Brief:
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Rural areas across the US are suffering from a severe shortage of healthcare workers.
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For example, in North Dakota, staffing is a priority for 27 out of 36 critical access hospitals in the state. And in South Carolina, there were 77.5 primary care doctors per 100,000 people in 2012, compared with 90.1 per 100,000 nationwide.
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Some solutions which have been proposed include having states recruit students from rural areas for premed and advanced practice programs, collaborate with state medical schools to admit and support students who are prepared to practice in rural communities and expand practice opportunities in community settings.
Dive Insight:
Seeing to it that rural areas are served by enough healthcare workers is a thorny problem. While money isn't the answer to every health system problem, in this case it seems that funding -- such as say, paying off student loans for doctors who practice in rural areas -- might be one of the more effective ways of expanding the healthcare workforce in rural areas. Unfortunately, this can't be done overnight. It looks as though these rural healthcare worker shortages will require years if not decades of active effort to erase.