A discussion about rural health care on The Rick Solem Show ahead of two days of health and public health programs hosted by UW-La Crosse this week.

Two educators joined, looking at different pieces of the rural health puzzle — Dr. Caitlin Carroll of the University of Minnesota and UW-La Crosse’s Dr. Gary Gilmore.

Carroll is a health economist, whose work focuses on rural hospitals, mergers and closures, while Gilmore is a UW-L public health professor and director of community health programs.

Carroll is also previewing her free virtual UW-L talk Tuesday on rural hospital consolidation — what’s driving the closures and mergers, and what happens to access, prices and quality of care when they do.The conversation also gets into rural OB care, prevention and whether there’s a better way to keep essential rural health services available.

Carroll’s UWL talk: Causes & Consequences of Consolidation in Rural Hospital Markets — 12:50–1:50 p.m. Tuesday. Free and virtual; registration is required. Register for the free UWL presentation.

Gilmore’s Wisconsin Education Network program: The 40th annual program runs 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Wednesday focusing on public health outreach and quality assurance. Both programs are virtual and open to participants beyond the La Crosse area.

Episode Highlights:

• Your bill could rise: A rural hospital closes — and the consequences can show up in your health care costs, even if you never went there.
• The OB crisis: Rural hospitals are staying open while shutting down obstetric units. Why is delivering babies becoming so difficult to sustain?
• Why rural clinics are merging: Fewer patients, lower reimbursement and financial pressure are pushing rural health care providers toward consolidation.
• The monopoly question: What happens to prices when one hospital disappears and there are fewer places left to go?
• More than a closure: When a rural hospital shuts down, you can lose doctors and primary care access along with it.
• A different model: What if keeping a rural hospital open didn’t depend entirely on how many patients walked through the door?
• Health beyond hospitals: Could sidewalks, bike paths and the way a community is built actually be part of the health care equation?