Closing Another Hospital in Rural Michigan

May 6, 2024

Aspirus Ontonagon Hospital, the only hospital in one of Michigan’s largest counties, closed on April 19^th.

Ontonagon is on the western edge of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The next nearest hospitals are 47 miles and 62 miles away from Ontonagon. And what might be a 45-minute drive to the closest of these hospitals, Baraga County Memorial, will be much longer in a U.P. winter storm. And so, it’s understandable that in response to this closure, some residents are calling it a “life or death situation.”

Michigan now has a dozen rural counties with no acute care hospital. But what is happening in Michigan is part of the pattern of rural hospitals being closed and health care systems being dismantled in rural areas throughout the United States. Since 2005, nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed.

So, it should come as no surprise that this lack of health care for 15% of the U.S. population who live in rural parts of the country has resulted in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicating that “Rural Americans [are] More Likely to Die Early from Preventable Causes.” After all, if you have to drive two or three hours to the nearest center for specialty care, people go without preventive services. And rural areas have lower screening rates and less treatment access, period!

Aspirus, a so-called nonprofit chain of 19 hospitals based in Wisconsin, gave the community two months’ notice despite earlier promises it would build a new 15.8 million dollar facility with inpatient beds and an E.R. department. And while their officials said that the hospital closure in Ontonagon was “not about money,” it was.

Rural hospitals typically serve smaller populations with a higher proportion of uninsured and underinsured patients. And there’s no money in that for big hospital groups in a country where health care is a for-profit system. And they follow the money.