WSNA members featured in national story on rural healthcare

WSNA members Clara Bucio and Julia Barcott are featured in a story published in Forbes Nov. 24, looking at nurses on the frontline of rural healthcare. The story, “The Real Frontline, Part I: The Nurses Fighting to Keep Healthcare Alive in Central Washington,” is part of a multi-story project on nurses, the backbone of healthcare.

Bucio and Barcott work at Astria Toppenish, a small hospital on the edge of the Yakama Indian Reservation in an area where nearly half of residents depend on Medicaid or Medicare.

As author Richard Fowler wrote, “Their stories reflect a national reckoning over what it takes to keep rural America alive and cared for amid federal government cuts and state and local deficits.”

Some excerpts:

• For Barcott and Bucio, nursing looks nothing like it did before the COVID-19 pandemic. The long-brewing nursing shortage—more than 20 years in the making—has accelerated, shrinking staff even as patient needs grow more complex.
• Healthcare is shifting, Bucio said. “Now we are being pushed into this system of getting the patient seen and getting them out and trying to make the most money off the patient during that time period. And as a result, patient care is suffering.”
• “We are social justice warriors,” Barcott said. “We're the first line and the last line for our patients, their families, and our coworkers, because we don't just discharge someone and say, ‘Okay, here's your prescriptions.’ We also find out, do they even have money or the ability to pay for the prescriptions?”

 For more on the story, see the article in Forbes.