By Robert Pascasio, LFACHE, Administrator, Concho County Hospital District

Without our local healthcare system, the nearest hospital from Eden could be 30, 40, or 50 miles away.

On an ordinary day, those distances mean more time on the road and away from work or school for routine or ongoing medical care. For many families, a trip to another city can be a financial and logistical burden that causes them to postpone needed medical care, causing once-manageable conditions to worsen. During a medical emergency, those 30+ mile distances put potentially life-threatening time between a patient and definitive care.

Fortunately, we have a local hospital, clinic, and pharmacy right here in town.

The nearly 3,600 residents of Concho County, the approximately 1,900 residents of Menard County, travelers passing through town for work or recreation, and members of the prison population can receive primary care; imaging, laboratory, and pharmacy services; rehabilitation; observation; and emergency treatment, stabilization, and coordinated transfer when needed.

Every year, thousands of visits to our hospital, clinic, and pharmacy begin with someone who needs an answer, treatment, monitoring, recovery support, or help reaching specialty care.

As someone who has spent more than 35 years leading and advising rural healthcare organizations, my career has taken me through hospital turnarounds, natural disasters, workforce shortages, facility expansions, telemedicine programs, and the daily operational challenges of delivering care in small communities. Those experiences have reinforced one lesson: rural hospitals like Concho County Hospital District are essential healthcare infrastructure for the state.

The Texas Legislature recognized that essential role in its last session, passing House Bill 18, the Rural Health Stabilization and Innovation Act, which provides grants and other support to ensure rural hospitals can serve their communities for decades to come.

Our most recent Community Health Needs Assessment found that county residents and community leaders alike consider having local emergency care, clinic services, rehabilitation, pharmacy, laboratory testing, and imaging essential to the region’s health and safety. They also expressed confidence in the hospital and its clinicians.

When a patient needs a check-up, an employment physical, routine immunizations, medication management for a chronic condition, or x-rays for a suspected fracture, we are here.

When someone has a ranch accident, vehicle crash, fall at home, serious infection, breathing problem, or sudden change in a chronic condition, we are here.

When a patient needs advanced specialty care for diagnosis or ongoing treatment, we are here. Our team helps coordinate referral and transition to cardiology or oncology, for example. Good rural healthcare depends on knowing what can be treated locally, recognizing when additional expertise is needed, and helping our patients navigate through the system.

Texas is too large to build its healthcare system around the assumption that everyone can simply take a day off work or school and drive to a major medical center when they, or a loved one, need medical care. And even urban residents regularly find themselves in rural areas for work or play. People live, work, travel, camp, boat, hunt, fish, visit family, and conduct business across thousands of miles of rural Texas every single day. Anyone of them can need medical care at any time.

Concho County Hospital District meets those needs every single day.

Concho County Hospital District, and the hundreds of other small rural hospitals across the state like ours, are essential infrastructure, no less critical to a healthy Texas than water, power, or roads and bridges. A healthy Texas needs healthy rural hospitals.