What are some of the health care challenges in frontier areas?
The National Center for Frontier Communities’ publication Addressing the Nursing Shortage: Impacts and Innovations in Frontier America notes that over 30% of frontier counties lack a hospital. Frontier counties that do have hospitals may face higher costs than non-frontier hospitals, due to the lower volume of patients served. Frontier counties with nurse shortages or no hospitals are often clustered together, compounding the distance residents must travel to reach a hospital. Frontier areas face the same difficulties as other rural areas in maintaining their health care workforce. These thinly populated regions cannot easily compete with the wages and amenities offered to physicians and nurses by hospitals and clinics in metropolitan areas. Even communities that do have adequate staffing are often one doctor or nurse away from a shortage. For more information, please see our guide on Health Care Workforce. Some areas must cope with seasonal variations in health care needs, when the po
