By Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven Between the start of the pandemic and February 2021, rural hospitals nationwide received nearly $15 billion in federal relief dollars, according to researchers at UNC’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.  But while the money helped slow the pace of rural hospital closures and enabled […]

Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe. The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived. The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived was less than a mile from Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, but the ambulance couldn’t […]