R&I: Rural Hospital Closures Disrupt Care Access for Injured Workers but Don’t Worsen Claim Outcomes

Rural hospital closures resulted in a 3.6 percentage point drop in the use of emergency care services on the day of injury and add an average of 10.5 miles to the distance rural workers must travel to reach an emergency department, according to a report by the Workers Compensation Research Institute.

The study — the first to examine the effects of hospital closures within the workers’ compensation system — analyzed more than 12 million claims across 29 states for injuries occurring between October 2012 and September 2023.

Read their full article here.  The new WCRI study, Impact of Hospital Closures on Access to Care and Claim Outcomes, can be accessed elsewhere on our website!