In health care, distance is measured in more than miles. It can be measured in the months someone waits to see a specialist, or in the manageable condition that becomes an emergency because care came too late.

For many Arkansans, living a longer, healthier life depends, unfortunately, on where they live.

We see this most clearly in rural Arkansas, but the consequences affect our entire state. When a rural hospital closes or reduces services, patients travel farther for care, ambulances spend more time transporting patients, and communities lose both an essential service and an economic anchor.

Rural health care is part of Arkansas' infrastructure, just like our highways, power grid and broadband network. Protecting it begins with an honest conversation about the financial realities facing rural hospitals.

A hospital can be essential to its community and still lose money.

Hospitals must be ready around the clock to respond to heart attacks, strokes, serious accidents and other medical emergencies. That requires trained professionals, laboratory and imaging services, medications, technology, equipment and safe facilities.

Those expenses do not disappear on a slow day. A hospital must be prepared whether 10 patients come through its doors or 100. Yet hospitals are generally paid for the services they provide--not for maintaining the capacity to respond........

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