Many rural patients face unique barriers to healthcare access, which may include living long distances from healthcare facilities and specialists, poverty, provider shortages, and rural hospital closures or service cutbacks.
Rural patients are also more likely to be uninsured than are non-rural patients. Unfortunately, insufficient health coverage can cause patients to delay or avoid medical care altogether.
You can remove some of these obstacles and improve your patients’ access to the care they need by finding alternative funding sources for their medical costs and streamlining and automating the financial assistance process. This will both alleviate your patients’ financial burden and enhance the financial outlook of your own organization to ensure you remain open and can continue serving your patients and community.