On the pending failure of rural hospitals: state-by-state projections

These national data from Hospital CFO Report caught my eye today in relation to Arkansas, but there's plenty to concern pretty much every state with a rural population.  The headline is "631 hospitals at risk of closure, state by state."  An excerpt from Marcus Robertson's story follows: 

More than 200 hospitals in the U.S. are at immediate risk of closing because of financial losses and lack of financial reserves to sustain operations, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.

All but seven states have at least one rural hospital at immediate risk of shutting down. In half of the states, 25 percent or more of rural hospitals were at high risk, according to the report.

Six states have half or more of their rural hospitals at high risk of shuttering. Texas had the most with 76, while Hawaii had the highest percentage of at-risk rural hospitals with 75 percent.

The hospitals identified as being at immediate risk of closure had either low or non-existent financial reserves and a cumulative negative total margin over the most recent three-year period.

Across the U.S., 631 rural hospitals — more than 29 percent nationwide — are either at immediate or high risk of closure. Those at high risk either have low financial reserves or high dependence on nonpatient service revenues such as local taxes or state subsidies, according to the report.