Disparities in rural healthcare
Abstract
This study examines healthcare disparities between rural and urban populations in the United States, highlighting rural residents’ challenges in accessing timely and quality healthcare. These challenges include geographic barriers, limited access to specialists, socioeconomic factors and cultural and linguistic issues. The study analyses the impact of these disparities on health indicators such as chronic disease rates, maternal and child health outcomes and mortality rates. It also explores contributing factors such as social determinants of health, access to preventive care and workforce shortages in rural healthcare settings. The research further investigates the relationship between patient service margin and hospital closures, assessing whether patient service margin serves as a predictor of closure risk. Using secondary data from Missouri hospitals between 2019 and 2022, the study conducted descriptive statistics and paired samples t-tests to evaluate financial performance. The findings reveal that lower patient service margins may indicate delivery challenges, access issues and threats to the viability of rural healthcare services. Financial results vary widely for patient service margins, and these consistently negative margins suggest that rural hospitals have faced financial challenges, impacting their capacity to provide high-quality treatment and access. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/ business/.
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Author's Biography
Dr James Dockins is a professor of management in the healthcare leadership programme at Rockhurst University. He teaches courses in health systems, quality management, health policy, leadership and international business. With over 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Dr Dockins has served as a senior hospital and health plan executive in the United States and has also held leadership positions in international hospitals in India, Saudi Arabia and Mauritius. He obtained his EdD degree from the University of Memphis, an MBA from Lincoln University and an undergraduate health sciences degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research interests include healthcare quality, access to health care, health policy, patient satisfaction, pricing transparency and employee satisfaction. He is a Life Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Dr Dave Lingerfelt started his career at Cerner Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri, in 2002 as a technical support engineer. Over the years, he advanced into leadership roles, managing the technical training division and subsequently leading the social business (Web 2.0) implementation team, where he helped establish the company’s social business presence. In his last two years at Cerner, he worked in the remote hosting division, overseeing the implementation and support of large-scale health systems as they adopted new technologies and upgraded existing platforms. Dave holds a BS in management information systems and computer science from Kansas State University, an MBA with emphasis in healthcare leadership from Park University and a doctorate in higher education leadership from Rockhurst University. He currently serves as the Director and Professor of Healthcare and Data Science at Rockhurst University in the Helzberg School of Management, Kansas City, Missouri. Dave is also the Co-Founder of ITdoc Consulting, Kansas City, MO.
Citation
Dockins, James and Lingerfelt, Dave (2026, March 1). Disparities in rural healthcare. In the Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 10, Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.69554/OEHG4713.
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