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As COVID-19 has ravaged the nation and the entire world, health care workers in Pennsylvania have served on the front lines to save lives and preserve the communities in which they live and work. Even now, as renewed hope of a vaccine and a return to normal looms on the horizon, challenges continue for health care providers in Pennsylvania.
Despite the commitment, talent, and expertise of thousands of health care workers, the number of Coronavirus cases in Pennsylvania recently surpassed 818,000, with upwards of 5,000 to 10,000 new cases in the commonwealth being reported every day. Hospitalizations are on the rise and health care facilities, especially in rural communities which are home to 27% of the state's population, are scrambling to meet the growing need for qualified nurses.
While rural communities are home to more than a quarter of the commonwealth's population (approximately 3.5 million residents), there are only 41 rural hospitals and 71 rural health clinics located outside of Pennsylvania's urban areas. These facilities are critical for communities who are already disproportionately affected by a gap in quality health care.
Compounding the challenge, more than 170 rural hospitals have closed nationwide since 2005. In Pennsylvania at least 9 rural hospitals, or 22% of all hospitals serving the commonwealth's non-urban areas, were already deemed at high risk of closing before the virus outbreak. Since March 2020, elective surgeries and early detection screening procedures like X-rays and mammograms, which are critical to sustaining the long-term viability of smaller hospitals, have been largely postponed due to COVID-19. Without the scope of other services urban hospitals can offer, rural hospitals are at further risk of closing.
Fewer options, in combination with increased hospitalizations of critically ill patients due to the pandemic, have caused increased workloads, longer shifts and less flexibility in scheduling. Further, 63% of primary health care worker shortages exist in the nation's rural communities. This has exacerbated burnout among health care workers in both urban and rural settings. Collectively, these challenges are feeding into a health care professional shortage that disproportionately affects smaller hospitals in rural areas.
COVID-19 has exposed the need to find solutions to these issues and improve access now and long after the pandemic effects subside. Rural areas face additional barriers to such innovative service options like telehealth. One primary example of a barrier is the lack of broadband availability -- widely known as the digital divide -- which directly hinders digital health care adoption and implementation. While the Federal Communications Commission estimates as many as 800,000 Pennsylvanians live without high-speed internet, research from Pennsylvania State University estimates the true number of Pennsylvanians without broadband at likely being closer to 11 million.
Maintaining and growing Pennsylvania's health care workforce is fundamental to providing access to quality healthcare, especially in rural areas, and solutions must be identified to retain nursing talent and simultaneously provide upward career mobility in these communities.
Education is a key factor to addressing this issue, yet most health care and nursing education programs are based in urban areas that pull talent away from rural settings and lack exposure to rural practice environments.
Online, competency-based programs like Western Governors University (WGU) allow prospective health care students and professionals in rural communities to continue their life-saving work while also advancing their education. Such programs directly support Pennsylvania's rural access hospitals to recruit and retain nurses where they are.
Committing to higher education and economic workforce development across the commonwealth is an essential step toward ensuring the health and safety of all Pennsylvanians. We must increase accessibility to professional health care education in rural communities, particularly in nursing, to ensure both urban and rural communities are equipped with the talent needed to provide proper care.
As Pennsylvania brings much-needed recovery efforts, it is imperative that health care, higher education and government leaders in the commonwealth recognize and prioritize the needs of front-line health care workers by finding ways to attract and retain talent in hospitals of all sizes, but especially in those facilities serving our most vulnerable communities.
Addressing the educational needs of health care workers strengthens Pennsylvania's health care system by ensuring that all hospitals and health care facilities can best serve their communities for generations to come.
Mary Carney has nearly four decades of health care experience and is a state director of Prelicensure Nursing for Western Governors University, a nonprofit, accredited university focused on competency-based learning that serves more than 2,500 students in Pennsylvania.