Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from Harvest Public Media, author Madelyn Beck discusses the struggles faced by rural hospitals and their pleas to Congress for help to stay afloat.

• What hardships faced by rural hospitals can donors tackle?

• To learn more about the fragility of rural hospitals, click here.

Rural hospitals aren’t just providers of medicine and health care, but also are often major employers and a massive part of a town’s tax base. However, mounting challenges are forcing these hospitals to merge and close in droves.

Since 2010, 95 rural hospitals have closed around the U.S., according to the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program, while 380 have merged between 2005 and 2016.

The American Hospital Association wants Congress to do something about it, and recently published a point-by-point overview of all the challenges rural health care systems face and what can be done.

The troubles, according to the report, are a mixture of long-term problems (staff shortages, aging infrastructure), more recent problems (rising drug costs, federal regulation changes) and emerging problems, like the opioid crisis and cyber threats.

“Many rural hospitals, especially those with very limited resources, become overburdened as challenges intensify, accumulate, and compound each other,” the report stated. “Moreover, the issues of today may hinder rural providers’ preparedness for the challenges of tomorrow.”

Read the full article about rural hospitals by Madelyn Beck at Harvest Public Media.