A record number of hospitals closed in rural America last year. For the residents of Cuthbert, Georgia, the loss has meant many problems, including delayed care for emergencies that can turn deadly.
As hospital systems and insurers adjust to the pandemic, their contract negotiations grow increasingly fraught. Contracts for in-network care are ending without a new deal, leaving patients suddenly with out-of-network bills or scrambling to find new in-network providers.
The pandemic has so seriously strained already tight state psychiatric hospitals in Georgia, Virginia, Texas and elsewhere that these facilities for the poorest and most vulnerable people with mental illness struggle to admit new patients.
Group homes and facilities that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were hurting for staffers before the pandemic. Now the nationwide job crunch and pandemic pressures are making it even worse.