This week takes me on a road trip, but I assure you there’s no VW bus with a dashboard full of party snacks.

I’ll be in Sioux Falls, SD, Wednesday for Sanford Health’s second annual Summit on the Future of Rural Health Care. Speakers, including AHCA’s Mark Parkinson, will tackle a range of topics — such as workforce, technology, the economics of our aging society — that have clear importance for rural nursing homes and providers all over the country.

For someone who’s never spent time in the Plains or the Midwest aside from short trips to the McKnight’s home office outside Chicago, the event should be part of an eye-opening couple of days.

Probably more so, in some ways, than the conferences and conventions that jam our calendars this time of year. As a journalist, I appreciate hearing directly from industry movers and shakers on their own turf, especially when it means getting into the trenches and talking one-on-one with frontline staff.

That’s especially true when it comes to engaging rural nursing home workers, many of whom are employed by small operators who often still shy away from any kind of media attention. 

But we need to hear their voices, and I plan to do that in Nebraska on Thursday. That’s when I’ll be visiting a 70-bed nursing home that has been made much smaller, essentially due to its inability to recruit and retain staff.

And it’s in a town whose tourism bureau says the community’s strength “lies in the people who have made productivity and quality workmanship trademarks.”

There’s the rub, right? Residents in the heart of the country are known for their work ethic, and yet, depending on who you ask, those in rural locales (and other places, too) either don’t want to work in nursing homes or aren’t paid enough to do so.

And then there’s the third concept: In some towns where the population hovers at or below 1,000, there simply aren’t enough working people to keep buildings staffed at a level that can meet their aging community’s needs. 

As sad as rural closures have been to report on, knowing there are families at the other end of every business decision, I’m looking forward to learning more about rural struggles from those living them day in, day out.

As I set out on the trip Tuesday morning, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services made of its own nursing home staffing study and site visits to rural operators. Did they listen to the concerns from overburdened workers and leaders in such places? Do they know the desperate amount of phone calls, internet stalking and nurse wanted ads that administrators have resorted to, with no responses?

How could they have, and then concocted a minimum staffing plan that still holds rural providers — often small, and often one of only a few healthcare providers in a given community — to the same rules as better located facilities with way more workers to attract? Requiring the same elements, but later, isn’t making much of a concession.

Did they hear how dedicated the workers that providers have found are to keeping their patients in good health, their buildings afloat, and their neighbors near their elderly loved ones in need of care?

My plan is to look for those kinds of stories on this trip and then to look for those who are actively working on solutions. With the context of the Summit and its search for cross-continuum support for nurses and other clinicians in this new healthcare environment, I should have quite a bit to share. 

Kimberly Marselas is senior editor of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News columns are not necessarily those of McKnight’s.