The Importance of Rural Healthcare
SOUTH RENOVO – Compared to big-city hospitals, rural hospitals, like Bucktail Medical Center, are typically smaller in size, but offer personalized care that larger facilities are not able to provide. Their services also make a big impact on the community with their technology and specialized services.
Local Lifesaving Care & Remote Access
Access to healthcare services is a key component to quality outcomes, rural providers play a significant role in delivering timely, effective and safe care. Rural emergency rooms are often the frontline when a quick response is vital. Bucktail Medical Center can now use technology such as telemedicine to connect patients to off-site specialists. If Bucktail Medical Center did not exist, the nearest ER would be nearly 30 minutes away. When minutes count, rural hospitals can and do save lives.
Specialty and Primary Care Close-to-Home
Rural hospitals can identify the unique needs of the local community and use this knowledge to partner with urban health systems and regional medical centers to make those special services available. Wound Care, IV Antibiotics, Pain Management and Oncology are just a few of the services that have been utilized by our hospital and community clinic. Bucktail Medical Center partners with larger facilities to offer services which are desperately needed in rural areas like Renovo.
Personalized Care
Through personal attention and collaboration Bucktail Medical Center is large enough to serve our community’s health needs but is also small enough to provide personalized attention to all patients. Countless studies discuss the value of “healing the body by healing the heart.” Rural providers frequently outperform urban counterparts in the “experience of care.”
Economic Engines
Increasing access to quality, compassionate care is the number one goal of many rural hospitals, but rural hospitals care for their communities as well as their patients. Many rural hospitals are often economic engines in the small areas they serve. Many times, the hospital represents one of the largest employers in a rural community and plays a significant role in attracting businesses and industry to further spur economic development.
Rural hospitals have the unique capacity to provide patients with the “best of both worlds.” Rural hospitals are large enough to offer top technology and small enough to talk you through your tests. They are large enough to attract a wide range of specialists, but small enough to offer same-day appointments. They are large enough to compete nationally regarding quality, but small enough to know your name.
