ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 The largest gathering of rural health care leaders anywhere in the country took place in North Texas this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the third year in a row, Arlington hosted the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals\u2019 annual conference, also known as TORCH.<\/p>\n
At the conference, Peter Justen and his team tried to connect with as many people as possible. It\u2019s their first time at the TORCH conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI live in a rural area. I have a hospital 20 minutes away. If they close, and they\u2019re in danger of closing because of uncompensated care, the next closest hospital is an hour and a half away. So we\u2019re really trying to avoid that and show hospitals how to do that,\u201d said Justen, CEO at AmeriTrust Solutions.<\/p>\n
AmeriTrust Solutions is a Washington, D.C.-based government technology company helping streamline what he calls a daunting Medicaid application process for applicants.\u00a0They\u2019re also working to make sure hospitals get paid for their care, an issue he said the Lone Star State needs help with.<\/p>\n
\u201cTexas has the highest amount of uncompensated care in the country. Somewhere between $7 and $8 billion, and it\u2019s only getting a lot worse. Now, if we can fix that problem, we can help Texas solve their uncompensated care problem, if we could help keep more rural hospitals open and giving people the care that they need,\u201d said Justen.<\/p>\n
The president and CEO of TORCH said that between 2010 and 2020, 26 rural hospitals in Texas closed. But since 2020, only three have closed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still pressure and our hospitals are vulnerable. We had one rural Texas hospital closure last year, but it\u2019s not the same. Actually, the big, beautiful bill had some Medicaid cuts in it that are a problem. But Texas, that\u2019s a modest thing for Texas because we\u2019re a non-expansion state,\u201d said John Henderson, president and CEO of TORCH.<\/p>\n
Despite minimal closures since 2020, Justen said more rural hospitals in Texas are on the brink of closure.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetween 50-80 hospitals in danger of closing, going back to creating care deserts. That\u2019s wrong,\u201d said Justen.<\/p>\n
Health experts say rural hospitals continue to be plagued with hurdles because patients tend to be older and poorer, and those hospitals have less foot traffic.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s something state Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, knows all too well about.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we have a number of, I believe, 11 or 12 rural hospitals. We have some of the same struggles that other rural hospitals do throughout the state. In fact, the last hospital that closed was the last one that opened and closed was actually one that we were involved with there in Montague County in Bowie. And we\u2019re currently working on some things at the federal level that will help get that hospital reopened,\u201d said Spiller.<\/p>\n
Which is the whole point of the TORCH conference: getting health care leaders, politicians and business owners like Justen to connect and collaborate and to help save more lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 The largest gathering of rural health care leaders anywhere in the country took place in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2271,150,152,151,132,8455,1570,102,138,584,223,82,27,1569,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-253159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-app-health","9":"tag-arlington","10":"tag-arlington-headlines","11":"tag-arlington-news","12":"tag-austin","13":"tag-blessing-iwuchukwu","14":"tag-ctv","15":"tag-dallas","16":"tag-el-paso","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-san-antonio","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}