This rural hospital closed, putting lives at risk. Is it the start of a 'tidal wave'?

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WILLOWS — As hospital staff carted away medical equipment from abandoned patient rooms, Theresa McNabb, 74, roused herself and painstakingly applied make-up for the first time in weeks, finishing with a mauve lipstick that made her eyes pop.“I feel a little anxiety,” McNabb said.She was still taking multiple intravenous antibiotics for the massive infection that had almost killed her, was unsteady on her feet and was unsure how she was going to manage shopping and cooking food for herself once she returned to her apartment after six weeks in the hospital.But she couldn’t stay at Glenn Medical Center.

It was closing.The hospital — which for more than seven decades has treated residents of its small farm town about 75 miles north of Sacramento, along with countless victims of car crashes on nearby Interstate 5 and a surprising number of crop-duster pilots wounded in accidents — shut its doors on October 21.McNabb was the last patient.Nurses and other hospital workers gathered at her room to ceremonially push her wheelchair outside and into the doors of a medical transport van.Then they stood on the lawn, looking bereft.They had all just lost their jobs.

Their town had just lost one of its largest employers.And the residents — many of whom are poor— had lost their access to emergency medical care.

What would happen to all of them now? Would local residents’ health grow worse? Would some of them die preventable deaths?These are questions that elected officials and policymakers may soon be confronting in rural communities across California and the nation.Cuts to Medicaid funding and the Affordable Care Act are likely rolling down from Washington D.C.

and hitting small hospitals already teetering at the brink of financial collapse.Even before these cuts hit, a 2022 study found that half of the hospitals in California were operating in the red.

Already this fall:...