Accessibility of Primary Care Providers in Nebraska

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Nebraska has twenty-three counties that have no primary care providers (PCP) currently practicing in them (2011). This means that if a person lives near the center of that county, they may be as far as an hour and a half before they find a physician who practices primary care. Why is this important to public health? It is important because in rural settings where health departments may be covering districts hundreds of miles wide, often the biggest influence and source of health information in a patient’s life is their primary care provider. This is the person that delivered them, and it is the doctor that will take care of them until they retire. The relationship between provider and patient can’t be ignored, because it is what allows the physician to have some authority in the patient’s eyes. However, with an aging physician population and an ever growing need for medical care, that relationship is being threatened. Patients are forced to travel greater distances to see their primary care provider, and sometimes even longer to see specialists. While, to some extent, healthcare access will always be more limited in rural settings, there are ways to improve the access to care afforded to rural residents. This paper will compare the accessibility and the utilization of primary healthcare services in rural Nebraska. Because there is no way to cover all the information necessary, this paper will focus on critical access hospitals (CAHs) and their respective information.
The accessibility of healthcare by rural residents of Nebraska has been continually scrutinized by public health officials for dozens of years. Rightfully so, because while Nebraska has greatly improved it...

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