Background: In a time when rural hospitals across the United States are closing for various reasons and local residents are left with limited access to healthcare, our academic medical center successfully built one of the few new rural facilities in the country and opened it in January 2023. The new hospital is a seventeen bed [...]

Background: In a time when rural hospitals across the United States are closing for various reasons and local residents are left with limited access to healthcare, our academic medical center successfully built one of the few new rural facilities in the country and opened it in January 2023. The new hospital is a seventeen bed [...]

Background: In the United States (US), obesity is associated with a high burden of morbidity and mortality, and its prevalence is increasing. A higher prevalence of obesity disproportionately impacts rural (vs. urban) areas and the Midwest and South (vs. West and Northeast) regions (1-2). In addition, obesity is linked with greater healthcare costs compared to [...]

Background: Michigan Medicine’s Hospital Care at Home (HCAH) Program was designed to provide eligible patients living in Southeast Michigan hospital level care from their own homes. Since the advent of the CMS Hospital at Home Waiver in Nov 2020, 93% of HCAH programs have been in urban locations, with prominent programs in cities such as [...]