rural hospitals

(Runtime :57)Across the Northwest, emergency room doctors and nurses are being plowed under with fall injuries. Many people are falling from snow, ice and…

President Biden on Tuesday is set to announce new steps to reach rural Americans in the push to get as many people as possible vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official tells NPR. This emphasis comes as rural hospitals are raising alarms about the pace of vaccination — even among their own employees.

Rural America has been the site COVID hotspots this year: prisons, nursing homes and meat packers. But there are few doctors, ICU beds and little backup when health care workers also get sick. Ken Roberts died Nov. 29, just one person among many who died in an outbreak of COVID-19 at North Valley Extended Care in the Okanogan County town of Tonasket — population about 1,000. So far, at least 16 people at the facility have died since Thanksgiving.

"We are today in a more dangerous position than we were in March when our first stay-home order was issued," Gov. Jay Inslee said during a Sunday press conference. "In March, we were heading into the summer months. And we were largely successful relative to other states because of the combination that we acted early we did not wait," he added.

Lydia Mobley is a traveling ICU nurse. She describes how hard it's been treating patients during the current surge in coronavirus cases.

Rural "critical access" hospitals, often some of the largest employers in small towns, have been operating on razor-thin margins throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Hospitals in Washington are starting to act on the permission given them by Gov. Jay Inslee to resume non-essential medical procedures. Some may begin work by or before next week.

Nine rural hospitals in Washington from Forks to Omak to Republic have new shipments of hospital masks, thanks to the organization that advocates for them in Olympia. And that organization’s CEO is getting a big kick out of the whole thing.

While the greater Seattle area has so far borne the brunt of the outbreak in Washington, health care workers outside the epicenter are bracing for what’s to come.

State regulators and even one medevac company have raised doubts about prepaid subscriptions and promised benefits offered by air ambulance companies. Gaps in coverage can be a problem.