Coronavirus in rural America (Part CVI): Out of central Washington from NPR this morning

Anna King reports from Okanogan County, Washington, population 41,120, under the headline, "Rural Health Systems Challenged By COVID-19 Surge."  The story leads with the death of a 66-year-old man suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease, at a long-term care facility in Tonasket, population 1,032.  

The town's health care system is in crisis, a striking example of the perilous state of rural health care.

Rural America has been the site of COVID-19 hotspots this year: prisons, nursing homes and meat packers. But there are few doctors, ICU beds and little backup when health care workers also get sick.

The deceased man's step sister explains, ""When we want to get a COVID test we have to go 30 miles away to Omak (Washington).  So we can't just go to our local hospital. They don't have enough."

Like some other stories I've heard or read, this one refers to the transfers coronavirus is necessitating between rural and urban hospitals.  

Confluence Health is a health system that covers north-central Washington, including Tonasket. It has a dozen clinics across a wide swath of the region. Incoming CEO Dr. Douglas Wilson says as his hospitals fill with COVID-19 patients, they're crowding out victims of car accidents, heart attacks and head injuries.

King quotes Wilson, 

You hate to put someone on a helicopter or in an ambulance and fly them over the mountains in the winter, when they would've done better had they been able to receive care here locally without traveling. That's a difference between life and death sometimes.

Another story about such transfers, this one out of Alaska, is here. 

I've also heard NPR reports (picked up from local affiliates) the past few days out of Boerne, Texas, Lubbock, Texas, and Durango, Colorado.  The Lubbock story is by Kaysie Ellingson.  The Durango story, featuring an interview with the mayor, is here.