SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — Dozens of Sanford Health care providers and industry leaders attended the third annual “Summit on the Future of Rural Health Care” in Sioux Falls.
Some of the challenges facing rural health care revolve around accessibility. This year’s summit highlighted efforts to combat issues with rural health care and how to combat the shortage of physicians as well as speaking on some of the advancements made from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the United States, hosted the summit at the Sanford Barn on Tuesday.
President and CEO of Sanford Health, Bill Gassen said more than 20% of Americans live in rural America and bringing health care to them brings its own challenges.
“When it comes to the challenges of rural America, it’s as simple and as complex as how do we improve access, how do we improve quality, and how do we do that in a financially stable way, Gassen said. “These communities have to have us.”
Gassen added ensuring rural residents can get access to health care is important.
“For a lot of communities, some of its virtual care or no care, so its physicians who say we’re gonna travel hundreds of miles by car when it’s snowing out because we are all that stands between that patient and life-saving care,” Gassen said.
Scott Gottlieb, the 23rd Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration and well-known American physician, said there have been some good changes made since COVID including at-home tests for infectious diseases.
“More patients self-diagnosing and being more aware of infection status is going to lead to a change in behavior that is going to have a positive impact on a population health level,” said Gottlieb.
Gottlieb said with more technology coming out to keep more accurate track of a person’s health
“Being able to employ these tools in the home and couple them with a telehealth visit, we’re going to be able to do much more and extend care into more obscure settings,” Gottlieb said.
Bruce Scott, American Medical Association President, said for places like rural America the shortage is already here.
“AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) estimates a shortage of 86,000 physicians in 10 years, but let me tell you the problem is already here in rural America,” Scott said. “It’s estimated that next year, not 10 years from now there is going to be a shortage of 22,000 primary care doctors, so this isn’t a pseudo-crisis down the road.”
Scott added a huge part of that is because of the steady decrease in pay for physicians.
“Physicians now are being paid 29% less than we were being paid for the same services in 2001. No matter what industry we are talking about a 30% cut is unsustainable,” said Scott.
Scott said that while the amount of physicians taking on Medicare patients hasn’t gone down the amount of new patients has.
“While there are physicians ‘participating’ they aren’t taking any new patents and we all know that access to care is the foundation of health care,” Scott said. “We need a permanent fix so that smaller physician practices and those with less deep pockets can actually invest in this way that would help us with health care access.”
Currently, Sanford offers “E-visits” where you can virtually seek medical care without going into a clinic.
