Rural health costs: Lower, but just as uneven
Writing on the rural news site Daily Yonder, Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery take a look at the Dartmouth Atlas, using only cost data from the two-thirds of hospital service areas that have mostly rural or exurban populations. They found that only 27 percent of the rural HSAs had Medicare reimbursement costs above the national average, but that variations in spending between rural areas were just as pronounced as those among their urban counterparts.
Bonners Ferry, Idaho, a town of about 2,500 near the Canadian border that’s home to the lowest Medicare costs of any American majority-rural area. Photo by prentz via Flickr.
The accompanying map is particularly nifty, not just because of what it shows about rural health differences, but also about the coverage and costs of rural hospitals.
To learn more about the Dartmouth Atlas and how to use it to determine how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States, read AHCJ’s Covering Hospitals, a slim guide that focuses on how journalists can best use Dartmouth Atlas and Hospital Compare.
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Students look at rural health care in north Ga.
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health policy, Hot Health Headline, Member news, Pharmaceuticals, Studies, Uncategorized
Students at the University of Georgia spent the past few months assembling a 19-story package on health in six rural counties near the school’s Athens, Ga., campus. The package, done by students from Pat Thomas’ health and medical reporting class and Mark E. Johnson’s documentary photography course, makes extensive use of video and multimedia slide shows.
The stories focus on particular areas of interest in each county and help tell stories ranging from the challenges of starting a family in economically disadvantaged rural areas to the influence of gangs on the lives of folks living in those areas. In other counties, the reporters covered the prison system, the struggles of aging residents and the senior centers that serve them, and emergency services and rural medicine.
The stories show the breadth of reporting possible within the health care beat and paint a picture of rural health using varied approaches to storytelling.
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
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- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
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