Rural Hospitals

Federal Leadership and Targeted Programs Needed Gao ID: HRD-90-67 June 12, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO identified and reviewed programs targeted at assisting rural hospitals.

GAO found that: (1) multiple, interrelated factors contributed to the financial distress of at-risk rural hospitals; (2) at-risk rural hospitals had low patient volume, limited services, less technology, and higher costs per discharge; (3) there were many federal initiatives addressing at-risk rural hospitals, but, despite those efforts, many rural community hospitals were financially distressed; (4) problems remained because of shortcomings in program design, inadequate targeting, insufficient publicity, and ineffective monitoring; and (5) the lack of centralized information on the initiatives' outcome has prevented hospital and state officials from building on successes and avoiding failures.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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