MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) — Hospitals in rural Alabama are scaling back services or closing all together. Labor and delivery units have closed at hospitals in Monroe County and Clarke County. Thomasville Regional Medical Center shut its doors in September. To help improve access to care, USA Health is creating a team that’s focused on rural areas.
“The healthcare environment is getting more and more challenging every day, whether that is the regulatory requirements that we have to comply with, challenges with health insurance companies, IT security, having an adequate workforce. It is just more and more difficult to have a health care system, and you have to do all those things, whether you have 400 patients in your hospital or four,” said Liz Walker, USA Health’s new Virtual Care and Rural Initiatives Executive Director.
Walker says they plan to have USA Health doctors see patients at rural facilities. Walker says they’ll be working with existing facilities in Covington, Clarke, Washington, Escambia, Monroe, and Conecuh Counties. Last year, she says there were more than 10,000 people who sought care and were discharged from hospitals in those counties.
“We’re going to have a physician coordinator who is going to try to get the physician support in these areas, whether it’s primary care specialists that they need, because if we don’t have a doctor, then it’s really difficult to provide care. So we’re going to have someone who is focused just on plugging in those resources,” said Walker.
She says rural facilities will also be receiving assistance from USA Health behind the scenes with things like grant writing and medical billing to help maximize revenue. Walker says the state is paying more than $1 million to help with this initiative, that she hopes is making a difference by the end of the year.
