| Less than a year after Republicans voted to enact historic health care cuts, a rural Nebraska hospital is ending its dialysis program – and Republicans’ “Rural Health Transformation Fund” wasn’t enough to save it.
Chadron Hospital was a lifeline for dialysis patients, but after facing a $1 million loss on its dialysis services they were forced to shutter their doors, even as Republicans touted $50 billion in rural health care funding.
Thanks to Republicans’ devastating cuts, rural patients are left scrambling to find the lifesaving care they need, with one Chadron Hospital patient fearing the worst: “I guess I’ll just bloat up and die in a month.”
REMINDER: Republicans’ so-called “Rural Health Transformation Fund” is nothing but a useless bandaid for their $1 trillion health care cuts – which MAGA extremist Brinker Harding proudly endorsed.
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KFF Health News: Rural Nebraska Dialysis Unit Closes Despite the State’s $219M in Rural Health Funding
- The sun was just warming the horizon as Mark Pieper left his house near his cattle ranch on a crisp February morning.
- For the past 3½ years, three days a week, Pieper has made an early-morning commute to get dialysis at the nearest hospital.
- That February morning was one of his last dialysis sessions there before the hospital shuttered the service at the end of March.
- “I guess I’ll just bloat up and die in a month,” Pieper remembered thinking when he learned the center was closing, eliminating the only option near his home.
- Pieper and 16 other patients relied on Chadron Hospital for the life-sustaining therapy that filters waste and fluid from their blood — a job their failing kidneys could no longer do. Treatment lasts about four hours.
- The closure is just one example of the long decline of health care services in rural America, where people have higher rates of many chronic conditions but less access to care than elsewhere.
- The Trump administration promised to address this problem, when it launched the $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program in September. It may not be enough to stop the trend.
- Jon Reiners, CEO of the independent, nonprofit Chadron Hospital, wrestled with the decision to end dialysis services. He and several patients said that the closure was announced as Nebraska officials celebrated the $219 million the state will receive in first-year funding from the Rural Health Transformation Program.
- But the five-year program is aimed at exploring new, creative ways to improve rural health, not to help existing services stay afloat. States can use only up to 15% of their funding to pay providers for patient care.
- Reiners said Chadron Hospital lost $1 million a year on its dialysis service due to low reimbursement rates that didn’t cover operational costs.
- The facility is a critical access hospital, a designation that allows certain small, mostly rural hospitals to get increased reimbursement rates for their Medicare patients. While most of the affected patients were on Medicare, the critical access program doesn’t cover outpatient dialysis, Reiners said.
- The Wrights wrote letters to politicians and hospital leaders to share their concerns and ideas for keeping the unit open, including using the federal rural health funding.
- Simonson said she spoke with aides for the governor and her state representatives but none of the leaders called her back.
- “It feels like they don’t know that we exist at this end of the state,” she said.
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