Challenges for Public, Rural Hospitals

One in 4 community hospitals in the U.S. are public hospitals owned by a government and as such, face unique challenges because they tend to be smaller, less technologically equipped and treat a population that receives lower income and is more likely to be uninsured or covered by Medicaid. That's the finding in a statistical brief by the federal AHRQ, which compared these 1,131 hospitals to their 2,944 private, not-for-profit counterparts and to all 5,162 community hospitals in 2008. Additionally, those public hospitals in rural areas, 724, tended to have more patients per nurse, a lower percentage of registered nurses among licensed nurses, and more patients diagnosed with a high severity of illness than the public hospitals in metropolitan areas.