Not All Hospitals Have Equal Resources — Knowledge Sharing Can Help Level the Playing Field

In the U.S., your quality of healthcare often depends on your ZIP code.

According to Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, 45% of the nation’s rural hospitals are operating at a loss, and more than 300 are at risk of closing. Children’s hospitals face similar challenges: Matt Cook, CEO of the Children’s Hospital Association, predicts that declines in Medicaid funding will push pediatric centers to cut back on services.

Rural and children’s hospitals are often isolated and under-resourced, yet they’re responsible for providing care over vast geographies. These hospitals have the deck stacked against them, pressured to do more with less while maintaining high clinical standards for their patients.

Unfortunately, there is a critical gap between clinical standards and actual bedside practice, and that gap means that the care you receive in a well-funded urban hospital could look noticeably different from the care you receive in a small rural facility. Hospitals with low staffing numbers and low volume find it very difficult to deliver all of the practices and procedures required to meet the wide-ranging needs of their patients.

Increasing resources and attracting well-educated doctors and nurses to rural areas will require long-term, structural changes to our country’s healthcare training and funding systems. But there are steps we can take in the meantime to level the playing field. Nationwide, cross-institutional knowledge sharing can provide the support necessary for resource-constrained facilities to deliver the high-risk practices their patients need that they may not practice frequently. Resource-sharing across large networks of hospitals allows people to receive a higher quality of care across the country, regardless of where they live or how well-resourced their local health system may be.

Improving care through collaboration

In 2020, health care organizations and public health systems recognized the need for rapid innovation and information exchange as a means of overcoming disruptions to care caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. As stated in a 2022 article from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, “Decentralized innovation, crowdsourcing, and nontraditional information sharing are valuable methods to healthcare redesign and change. Despite well-founded limitations of these processes, they hold enormous potential to improve healthcare.”

In the years since, that collaborative experience has evolved as hospitals and health systems recognized the tremendous benefits of sharing knowledge and best practices. New approaches to collaboration go beyond patient records and lengthy clinical protocols to focus on “how” — providing microlearning resources to help medical staff instantly get up to speed on low-frequency procedures.

Resource-sharing allows rural and children’s hospitals to level up their workforces, scale quality care and ensure high clinical standards without requiring extensive spending on training and learning materials. Resource-sharing can also reduce burnout and staff turnover by shortening the time needed to acquire and consistently apply necessary skills and knowledge, enabling the consistent delivery of quality care in fast-paced and ever-changing clinical environments. As more hospitals join a resource network and create knowledge-sharing systems of their own, the financial and quality-of-care benefits will continue to compound.

Creating the rising tide

In September, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program, which set 10 priorities and committed to delivering $10 billion per year across the country for the next five years beginning in 2026. Knowledge-sharing networks align with six of those priorities, including IT advances to improve efficiency and patient outcomes, training and retaining the workforce, technology-enabled care delivery, and promoting evidence-based practices for chronic diseases.

Any group of isolated or under-resourced hospitals (from rural hospitals to public health facilities to pediatric centers) can build resource networks to sustainably elevate quality care for both children and adults. Resource networks help to enable operational execution, providing frontline staff with confidence to accomplish their day-to-day tasks the right way. A confident, competent staff is more likely to stay in their hospital — driving up employee retention — while delivering compliant, consistent practice.

The growing momentum for resource networks can build on the spirit of collaboration that began during the pandemic, creating a rising tide for under-resourced hospitals across the country. The return on investment is clear, and the benefits to patients and healthcare providers alike are obvious. It’s time for our industry to embrace collaboration and work together for a healthier, more equal future.

Photo: Cecilie_Arcurs, Getty Images

This post appears through the MedCity Influencers program. Anyone can publish their perspective on business and innovation in healthcare on MedCity News through MedCity Influencers. Click here to find out how.