Urban, rural hospitals closing at similar rates, study finds

A JAMA study from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health found urban hospitals closed at a 9.1% rate between 2010 and last year, compared with 8.3% for rural hospitals, with closures up 4% year over year while openings fell 3%. Closed hospitals were more likely to have served high-poverty communities with less access to transportation.

Overall 432 hospitals closed and only 216 opened, a net loss of over 24,000 beds, with new hospitals skewing urban, for-profit and small. The Midwest and South saw the most closures, concentrated in states that didn't expand Medicaid.

The study lands as the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act is projected to cut Medicaid spending by $886.8 billion over a decade, per the CBO, offset partly by $50 billion in rural health grants with limits on how much hospitals can actually draw from them.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.