Despite a years-long crisis that has led to dozens of rural hospital closures across the U.S., there are signs of life for at least one facility in Western Oklahoma.
As KGOU reports,the former Sayre Memorial Hospital Authority has been purchased by a brokerage firm, and the facility is expected to begin seeing patients again later this month. The facility, which is being renamed the Sayre Community Hospital, closed early last year due to an inability to renegotiate its payments with bondholders.
Despite the good news, Ted Streuli of the Journal-Record cautions that he believes the hospital reopening is an anomaly and not part of a larger trend.
The majority of the rural hospitals that have closed in recent years were located in states, like Oklahoma and Kansas, that have refused to expand Medicaid.