They're closing our hospital...

[wolf]

Over the last 15 years, we've had three hospital closures in my immediate area ... one Medical hospital, and two psychiatric (although one of the psych hospitals went from psych to drug rehab and back to psych before finally closing). This has not left us without services, however. As the medical hospital was in a town that had two other full service medical hospitals within a 3 mile radius. The psych units reduced the overall number of beds in our county, but we still have three standalone psych hospitals and four psych units within medical hospitals. Our access to medical care here may be atypical. For 795,000 residents (not counting folks over the county borders that would go to our county's facilities because of proximity) and a physical area of 487 sq mi (1262 sq km), there are three standalone psych hospitals, a state psych hospital, two drug & alcohol rehabs, and nine medical hospitals, one with a Class I Trauma Center ... a second Class I Trauma Center serving the Western parts of the county is expected to be built in the next 5 years or so.

There are at least 7 or 8 more hospitals in communities that border this county.