New Report: Hospitals Provide Critical After-Hours Health Care Access
By: Mike Espy, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
Just like many Americans, I too know from personal experience that medical emergencies don’t follow anyone’s schedule. They don’t wait for regular business hours. An illness or an injury can happen anytime, anywhere. And when it does, individuals and families need to be able to receive high-quality medical care right away — whether it’s the middle of the day or the middle of the night.
Hospitals and hospital emergency departments (EDs) are the only providers that offer around-the-clock, comprehensive care every hour of every day. While many, including the One Country Project, have previously raised these concerns, a new analysis underscores just how important this 24/7 access truly is, especially in rural and underserved communities.
Americans visited hospital EDs approximately 136 million times in 2021. Nearly half (49 percent) of those occurred after normal business hours, when physician offices are typically closed. Sixty-five percent of these after-hours calls happened after 8:00pm, when even urgent care clinics and other practices that offer evening hours are often closed.
Rural patients — who are more likely to be uninsured, underinsured, and have limited health care options — rely especially heavily on their local hospitals for routine and critical care. In an emergency, every single minute matters — but in remote communities, the nearest hospital may be an hour’s drive away or more. Rural areas saw more than 18 million ED visits in 2021. And nearly two thirds of all ED visits related to poisoning and overdose incidents — which are more prevalent in rural towns than in suburbs and cities — came after business hours. In short: Rural America truly needs its local hospitals.
Parents know that when their child is seriously sick or injured, the “next available appointment” is not sufficient. In 2021, more than one in five ED visits were children under the age of 18. And once again, the 24/7 capabilities of hospitals proved critical: More than half of those visits (55 percent), 15 million of them, took place after hours.
Sadly, some lawmakers are now pushing multi-billion cuts to patient care that could reduce access to the 24/7 hospital care that so many Americans rely on. Many hospitals are already struggling to break even. Half of rural hospitals lost money providing care last year, and more than 30 percent are at risk of closing. At a time like this, piling on even more drastic cuts would likely force many more to reduce services, make difficult decisions about staffing realities, or even close entirely.
Every American deserves access to high-quality, affordable health care, no matter where they live. Hospitals are the frontline providers that ensure individuals and families can get medical attention when and where they need it—especially when they have no other options. Now more than ever, it is critical that lawmakers provide our hospitals with the support they need—not saddle them with costly cuts that could jeopardize the 24/7 care that we all count on.