An Ohio University professor’s research shows the struggles of rural hospitals are complex

“Most of the hospitals in the United States are nonprofit organizations. In lieu of paying taxes, there are requirements that they invest in improving the health of their community overall. This is called a community benefit budget” (Forster, 2026).

“‘The one I think we can all picture is what’s called charity care. I think we all know that if we lack other access to health care, an emergency room will see us, right? The reason that belief has become so ingrained in the United States is out of this community benefit requirement that hospitals will treat patients in the emergency room.

Even if they can’t pay, they’ll classify it as charity care. That’ll be a piece of what they submit to the IRS justifying their tax-exempt status’” (Cronin, as cited in Forster, 2026).

“‘Rural hospitals are doing less. This makes sense. They’re smaller organizations. They have fewer staff. There’s real financial distress of rural hospitals in the United States today. They might not have a lot of extras to invest in community health’” (Cronin, as cited in Forster, 2026).

“‘A subsidized health service is a hospital that’s offering a service from their facility, knowing they’re losing money to do it.

From a pure business decision, if an organization’s losing money on an item, they would stop selling that item and replace it with something else or do market research. Here we have hospitals feeling like this is very needed by the community, so they’re still offering it’” (Cronin, as cited in Forster, 2026).

“‘We hear about maternity care deserts. We’re hearing about chemotherapy deserts more and more. These are rural hospitals that can no longer offer these services to the community because they risk closing due to finances.

I think that’s a lot of what’s happening in this one category of community benefit. We see hospitals trying to maintain these services they feel the community needs, even though they’re financial losses to them’” (Cronin, as cited in Forster, 2026).

“‘What I can tell you is where rural hospitals really struggle is that much of our health care systems are designed on volume and rural hospitals just aren’t going to have the volume. What they’re going to have is the fixed costs to have an emergency room open. You still need a minimum level of staffing that is very costly’” (Cronin, as cited in Forster, 2026).

This article is an interview between the author David Forster and Ohio University professor Cory Cronin. Cronin argues that the financial model of a non-profit hospital does not work in a rural setting, because most hospitals operate emergency and charity care at a loss. Even when patients are not there, an emergency room costs money to have open.

Relating to my capstone work, this article makes me question whether it is possible to better support rural hospitals with the other technologies I have examined. Most of them help alleviate congestion, and not the lack thereof. Adding more expensive technology to emergency departments will only raise costs for rural healthcare, and not stop the problem of funding. I wonder if the best solution would be for more healthcare centers to support each other, spreading funding from profitable centers around to rural locations. Overall, this article shed light on how hard the problem of supporting rural healthcare financially is.

References

Forster, D. (2026, July 24). An Ohio University professor’s research shows the struggles of rural hospitals are complex. WOUB Public Media. https://woub.org/2026/07/24/ohio-university-research-rural-hospitals-struggles-complex-modern-science/