Congressman Brett Guthrie, Dr. Oz stop in Glasgow, discuss rural health care
GLASGOW, Ky. – For many Kentuckians, health care is a huge question. Where someone can go to find quality health care is an even tougher question that is asked often all across the state.
On Friday, Congressman Brett Guthrie and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare, stopped by the T.J. Samson Health Pavilion to discuss the Rural Health Transformation program.
Oz addressed the hospital, saying that rural health is often tough to come by.
Oz says, “The reality is that about 60 million Americans who live in rural America have a life expectancy that’s almost three years shorter than if you’re an urban America. That’s just wrong. Your zip code should not be your destiny, especially when it comes to health.”
The Rural Health Transformation Fund was created by taking funds from Medicare and allowing governors to apply for funding, outlying what their plan would be to increase rural health care and holding them accountable after the money has been allocated, saying counties like Barren County and surrounding counties would directly benefit from a fund like this.
Oz says, “This fund was designed for one specific purpose to try to reshape and reimagine and reform rural health care. We put $50 billion into the rural health care system over the next five years. That’s a 50% increase over what would have been spent for Medicaid. It is a dramatic seismic shift in financing of health care in rural America. Counties like this benefit from those funds.”
However, Oz says that the biggest issue with world health care is a lack of confidence in the local health care system, forcing residents to drive longer distances just to receive care. Oz says that rather than building new hospitals, we should focus on improving the care already in place and restore confidence in the rural health care infrastructure that is already there.
He says, “Normally, a hospital that’s having problems has lost its census. There’s no one there. And the reason for that is people in that town are driving by that facility. They’ve lost confidence. They can get high quality care there. So if you elevate the quality of the experience in the hospital, then you change that dynamic.”
