North Carolina hospitals, health systems underpin our home

Countless factors make North Carolina a remarkable place to call home — from our world-class schools and education systems to our commerce-friendly business climate to our rich culture and history. But another important factor underpins all these things and truly makes our communities home: access to high-quality health care, primarily made possible by our local hospitals.

North Carolina has one of the largest rural populations in the country. Hospitals play an absolutely essential role in ensuring these communities have access to quality health care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. They are the only facilities to offer around-the-clock emergency and specialty services. For the 3.5 million people who call rural North Carolina home, hospitals are often the only sites for primary and acute care.

During my nearly three decades as a public servant, I worked hard to improve access to health care in Granville County and across North Carolina. Fundamentally, I believe all North Carolinians deserve access to quality care, no matter where they live and work. Now, as the primary caregiver for an aging parent, I can speak to this firsthand.

A recent report found that rural North Carolina residents must travel more than twice as far for NICU, pediatric, cardiac and cancer care compared to non-rural residents. Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., are threatening to make the problem even worse with legislation like the SITE Act and the FAIR Act that would cut funding for patient care and jeopardize the hospitals our communities count on.

Some elected officials don’t seem to understand the true value of health care in states like North Carolina. The simple fact is that cutting funding for hospitals will mean cutting patients’ access to care.

There are already significant discrepancies in access to health care. Eighty-seven counties in North Carolina, home to about 30% of the state’s residents, are considered “medical deserts,” meaning they lack access to primary care. Twenty counties have no hospital or pediatric care. Thirty-five lack ICU facilities, and 32 do not offer psychiatric services. Our rural counties have, on average, just 13 physicians for every 10,000 residents, about a third of the number in urban areas.

Amid these problems, hospitals are a critical lifeline that keep our most vulnerable residents from falling through the cracks entirely. The data shows that hospitals tend to treat sicker, lower-income patients with more complex conditions. If lawmakers in Washington, D.C., don’t support hospitals and health systems, North Carolinians will suffer, especially those in our rural counties.

What’s more, hospitals are engines of economic growth. A 2022 analysis found North Carolina’s hospitals and health systems directly support 268,000 jobs. On average, rural hospitals employ 320 workers, often making them the county’s largest employer. We rightly think of the Research Triangle as a hub for health care investment and innovation, but our local hospitals are also medical pioneers in their own right. Hospitals help train new health care workers and drive funding for services that we all rely on.

We cannot continue to ask our hospitals to do more with less. It is not sustainable, and North Carolinians will suffer. If we want to strengthen patients’ access to 24/7 care, we must strengthen support for hospitals and health systems in North Carolina and across the country.

Darryl Moss , who served as mayor of Creedmoor from 1999-2017 after a decade on the Board of Commissioners, is a member of the Golden Leaf Foundation Board of Directors.

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