Rural Healthcare: Consumer Challenges
Rural residents face significant healthcare challenges, including limited access to healthcare providers, higher rates of chronic conditions, hospital closures, transportation difficulties, and barriers to telehealth. These challenges can affect when, where, and how rural consumers receive healthcare and can ultimately impact health outcomes.
Rural healthcare consumers may have fewer choices and may have to travel greater distances to receive care. However, there are practical steps you can take to improve access to healthcare and control your healthcare costs. The following are practical steps and strategies for you to consider.
What Rural Healthcare Consumers Can Do
- Use Primary Care as Your First Resource
Whenever possible, establish a relationship with a primary care provider. Regular preventive care can help identify health problems earlier, manage chronic conditions, and may reduce the need for expensive emergency or hospital care.
- Consider Telehealth
For appropriate medical conditions, telehealth can eliminate or reduce some long-distance trips to the doctor. Ask whether your healthcare provider offers virtual appointments and whether your insurance or another payment option covers the service.
- Compare Healthcare Facilities
Don’t automatically assume the hospital is the only option. For non-emergency procedures and services, ask whether the care can safely be provided at an independent outpatient facility, ambulatory surgery center, imaging center, rural health clinic, or other community facility.
Different healthcare facilities can charge significantly different prices for the same or similar services.
- Ask About Costs Before Treatment
Before scheduling non-emergency care, ask about the expected cost. Questions to consider include:
- What will the procedure or service cost?
- What are the facility and professional fees?
- Are there additional charges?
- Is there a cash or self-pay discount?
- Is a payment plan available?
- Is there a less expensive location where the same service can safely be performed?
Getting cost information before treatment can help you avoid unexpected medical bills.
- Look for Community Health Centers
Federally supported community health centers and rural health clinics may provide primary and preventive care to consumers who have limited insurance or financial resources.
Some community health centers offer sliding-fee arrangements based on income, which can make healthcare more affordable for eligible consumers.
- Plan Specialty Care Carefully
If you must travel to another community for specialty care, try to coordinate appointments when possible. Scheduling several appointments or services during the same trip can reduce transportation, fuel, lodging, and time-away-from-work expenses.
- Ask Your Doctor About Alternatives
If a doctor recommends a hospital-based procedure, ask whether there are medically appropriate alternatives.
Questions such as:
“Can this be done somewhere less expensive?”
“Does this procedure need to be performed at a hospital?”
“Is there an outpatient facility where this can safely be done?”
can open the door to lower-cost options.
The goal is not simply to choose the cheapest option. The goal is to find the right location for your care based on safety, quality, convenience, and cost.
- Shop Around for Prescription Drugs
Prescription drug prices can vary substantially between pharmacies. Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about generic alternatives when appropriate.
Compare prices at local pharmacies and consider legitimate prescription-discount programs that may reduce your out-of-pocket costs.
- Take Advantage of Preventive Care
Preventive care can be particularly important for rural consumers because accessing healthcare may require significant travel.
Staying current with recommended screenings, vaccinations, dental care, routine checkups, and chronic-condition management can help identify health problems before they become more serious.
- Know When to Use Emergency Care
Cost should never be the reason to delay emergency treatment.
Chest pain, severe difficulty breathing, stroke symptoms, major injuries, severe bleeding, loss of consciousness, and other potentially life-threatening conditions require immediate medical attention.
When you have a medical emergency, get emergency care first.
Bottom Line
Rural consumers need to become proactive healthcare shoppers and advocates.
When care is not an emergency, compare providers, locations, prices, and payment options. Use telehealth and community healthcare resources when appropriate, and ask healthcare providers whether there are safe and less expensive alternatives to hospital-based care.
The goal isn’t to avoid healthcare. The goal is to get the right care, in the right place, at the right time, and at the right price.
