Rural Hospitals

Officials with Phelps Health say the agreement will help keep the Salem hospital afloat and maintain services in a region without many health services.

Jamaa Birth Village plans to open satellite midwifery birthing locations across Missouri next year. Patients can receive midwifery and doula care and social support services.

The state will repay educational costs for health care workers who are willing to work in underserved areas. Another program will increase the number of medical residencies in Missouri.

A July report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, a national policy group, found that 19 of Missouri’s 57 rural hospitals are at risk of shuttering because of “serious financial problems.”

The agreement will let the hospital that serves a predominantly rural area have access to the resources of a major city’s health care system without surrendering local control.

Noble Health, a three-year-old private equity-backed startup, acquired Audrain and nearby Callaway Community Hospital during the coronavirus pandemic. Facing staggering debt, lawsuits and two federal investigations, it sold the hospitals to a Texas-based Platinum Health Systems. This month, Platinum Health told hospital workers they no longer had jobs.

The U.S. Labor Department investigates Noble Health after former employees of its shuttered Missouri hospitals say the private equity-backed owner took money from their paychecks and then failed to fund their insurance coverage.

Dr. Joe Corrado saw his hospital being whittled away. Supplies for surgery disappeared, crucial medicines went unstocked, paychecks never came, he said. Just days before Noble suspended operations, he told management: “We don’t have the ability to do the things we need to take care of patients.”

A new report found the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated Illinois' rural health worker shortage.

Several small hospitals in the region report they’ve spent more time trying to find hospitals that can treat treat their sickest patients, particularly those at risk for COVID-19.