How far is too far? Rural hospital closures and emergency room travel distances

Author's Biography

James Dockins Dr James Dockins is a professor of management in the Healthcare Leadership programme at Rockhurst University. He teaches classes in health systems, quality management, health policy, leadership and international business. Dr Dockins has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry as a senior hospital and health plan executive in the USA and served in leadership roles in international hospitals in India, Saudi Arabia and Mauritius. While attending the University of Memphis, Dr Dockins obtained an EdD degree and earlier received an MBA from Lincoln University. He earned his undergraduate health sciences degree from the University of Missouri—Columbia. His research interests include healthcare quality, access to healthcare, health policy, patient satisfaction, pricing transparency and employee satisfaction. Dr Dockins is a life fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Dave Lingerfelt started his professional career at the Cerner Corporation in 2002 as a Technical Support Engineer. He later moved on to manage the technical training division. Dave then managed the social business (Web 2.0) implementation team working to establish a social business presence for Cerner. In his last two years at Cerner, he worked in the remote hosting division, where he was responsible for implementing and supporting large-scale health systems as they adopted new technology and upgraded existing platforms. Dave holds a BS in management information systems and computer science from Kansas State University. He earned his MBA with emphasis in healthcare leadership from Park University. Dave currently works at Rockhurst University in the Helzberg School of Management as the Director/ Professor of Healthcare and Data Science. He is also the co-founder of ITdoc Consulting.