When 87-year-old veteran Jim Motley experienced a stroke, his son Nicholas got him in a car to drive to the nearest hospital in West Virginia. After driving for over an hour, past two shuttered hospitals, Jim Motley had passed away. “What happened to Dad broke my heart…He suffered because there was no one around who could help him,” Nicholas said to The Washington Examiner.

What happened to Jim Motley is unfortunately common nationwide, and these so-called “medical deserts” are widespread. Closed pharmacies and hospitals, severe doctor shortages, and a lack of medical infrastructure are leaving over 30 million Americans stranded, forced to deal with inadequate healthcare that could mean the difference between life and death.  

Rural areas are disproportionately affected, as areas from the Badlands of South Dakota to the arid terrain of Western Texas have seen the disappearance of essential medical services harm communities. The steady closure of rural hospitals has left Americans, specifically in places like Vermont, Arkansas, and Alabama, to travel greater distances to hospitals. The pandemic has worsened the already severe crisis, as 20 rural hospitals were forced to close in 2020, a record number. Even before the pandemic, which strained rural healthcare even further, 101 rural hospitals closed between 2013 and 2020, a Government Accountability Office report found.

The spread of these “medical deserts” is particularly clear in Texas, where 62% of the state’s 254 counties have no general surgeons, The Examiner reports.  In addition, 55% of all rural hospitals in the state are at immediate risk of closing, compared to approximately 40% of rural hospitals across the country, according to the Texas Medical Association. One sobering example of this is seen in the Big Bend region. With the temporary closure of Big Bend Regional Medical Center’s delivery unit last year due to an acute nursing shortage, pregnant woman in a 12,000 square-mile area have been left with few adequate options to deliver their baby in a safe environment, and are often forced to drive well over an hour to the nearest hospital.      

For Dr. Jennifer Liedtke, a family physician in the rural town of Sweetwater, Texas, the remoteness of communities like hers causes significant medical difficulties. “We’ve been trying to recruit an [ob-gyn] to our hospital for almost five years and haven’t been able to get one. Recruiting to rural places is a tough job in itself.”   

In addition to hospital closures, the decline of rural pharmacies, often due to financial problems, are also negatively impacting communities. Between 2003 and 2018, out of 7,624 independent pharmacies, just over 16%, or 1,231 of them, shut down. Tori Marsh, a lead researcher for GoodRx, says that “Living in an area with low pharmacy density could increase wait times, decrease supply and make it harder to shop around for prescription medications.” The states of Minnesota, Georgia, Oklahoma, and like with rural hospitals, Texas, have been particularly hard hit by these closures, and pharmacy deserts have seen the problems that Marsh describes firsthand.   

In another rural state, Montana, which has seen a startling rise in fentanyl overdoses over the past year, President and CEO of the Frontier Institute Kendall Cotton tells Newsmax, “During the COVID pandemic, regulatory flexibilities for healthcare licensure helped Montana’s healthcare system overcome our longstanding healthcare shortages and rapidly add capacity when it was needed most. As severe healthcare shortages persist, policymakers should be focused on permanently reducing licensure red tape and expanding the ability of current practitioners to care for their patients.”

With an array of challenges facing the national healthcare system, from staffing shortages to inflation affecting essential equipment, to facilities in disarray or closing, it is clear that help is desperately needed, both for the medical providers and the Americans who rely on these lifesaving services.