Rural hospitals are caught in an aging-infrastructure conundrum

“I’ve got a surgeon that’s willing to do it. My facility isn’t big enough,” Stansbury said. “And urgent services like obstetrics I can’t do in my hospital, because my facility won’t meet code.”

Besides securing additional revenue for the hospital, such an expansion could keep locals from having to drive the 100 miles to Denver for orthopedic surgeries or to deliver babies.

Rural hospitals throughout the nation are facing a similar conundrum. An increase in costs amid lower payments from insurance plans makes it harder for small hospitals to fund large capital improvement projects. And high inflation and rising interest rates coming out of the pandemic are making it tougher for aging facilities to qualify for loans or other types of financing to upgrade their facilities to meet the ever-changing standards of medical care.

Lincoln Health

“Most of us are operating at very low margins, if any margin at all,” Stansbury said. “So, we’re struggling to find the money.”

Aging hospital infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, is a growing concern. Data on the age of hospitals is hard to come by, because hospitals expand, upgrade, and refurbish different parts of their facilities over time. A 2017 analysis by the American Society for Health Care Engineering, a part of the American Hospital Association, found that the average age of hospitals in the U.S. increased from 8.6 years in 1994 to 11.5 years in 2015. That number has likely…