I hadn't seen anything of this but it seems a hospital in rural Missouri, in the town of Kennett, is closing.
116-bed Missouri hospital to close
next month
The website Axios simply and clearly points out three very big factors of all this:
- Many people are worried residents won't get care at all or will suffer from having to drive long distances for hospital care.
- "We have two nursing homes, and people are already talking about pulling their loved ones out because there's not a hospital close enough," one worker said.
- "This little town just lost its biggest employer...financially, a lot of businesses are going to suffer," another employee said.
- Kennett is a farming community in Dunklin County, whose residents are poor and have some of the worst health outcomes in the state. (The area overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in 2016.)
Not only losing your town's only hospital but also it's biggest employer. Talk about a double, if not triple or worse "whammy."
Can you imagine even being elderly in that town, let alone in a nursing home, knowing your town is losing its hospital?
If you had a loved one in a nursing home there, would you keep them there?
Worse, if you were in that nursing home and in reasonably good condition otherwise, would you want to stay there, in that town, in that nursing home?
What do you bet the nursing home or homes in Kennett, Missouri will be losing patients, customers? And quickly? I would be very surprised if, in only a couple to a few years, the nursing home or homes there don't also close, have to close. I certainly hope I'm wrong about that.
Then, can you imagine being an employee of the hospital? Thinking you had a job for life? And you're in rural Missouri, rural America. The nearest hospital is 50 miles away. Further, do you think they have many job openings? It's questionable, at least.
The heck of it is, this is not good for the town of Kennett but it's not good for that entire area. It's not good for that region, that part of the state. Simply put, it's no way good for Missouri.
It's not good for America. It's not good for the nation.
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More of the fuller situation that brought this about here, below:
When a rural hospital shuts down
Other links:
