When private equity comes for rural hospitals

Hospitals hollowed out of drugs, supplies, and salaries

Audrain was once a 247-bed regional destination for care, with more than 4,300 admissions in 1992, according

. Internal medicine doctors, orthopedic surgeons, and pulmonologists competed to admit the most patients.

By 2019 it was a shadow of that former self. Yet patients like Dee Tate, diagnosed with cancer in 2020, relied on it. She got blood tests, scans, port…