NYT feature on rural nursing home closure

Jack Healy reports from Mobridge, South Dakota, population 3,465 under the headline, "Nursing Homes are Closing Across Rural America, Scattering Residents."  Here's an excerpt: 

More than 440 rural nursing homes have closed or merged over the last decade, according to the Cowles Research Group, which tracks long-term care, and each closure scattered patients like seeds in the wind. Instead of finding new care in their homes and communities, many end up at different nursing homes far from their families.

And there aren't many options for those who can't age in place, as home health aides are often "scarce and unaffordable," and adult children have often departed for metropolitan areas. There are often waiting lists for senior-citizen apartments.  The consequences:  traumatic relocations for older residents and fewer visits from family members, who must "spend hours on the road to see their spouses and parents."  

South Dakota chips in less than any state in that nation to pay for long-term care for those on Medicaid, but it's not the only state losing rural nursing homes.  Nebraska has seen five close in the last year, Maine, six.  Thirty-six have closed in the last decade because they couldn't meet safety standards.  

Other rural health care stories of the week are here (Tennessee) and here (Alabama).