[Excerpt of front-page article from The Day, Sunday, April 20, 2025, By Alison Cross]
Putnam — On a rainy Tuesday, medical staff from Generations Family Health Center prepped for a day of appointments outside the Hale YMCA.
[....] In a region with fewer health care providers per person than anywhere else in the state, Generations is working to boost access by making dental and medical care mobile.
For each primary care provider or dentist in Windham County, there are 2,050 residents, a 2022 report by DataHaven found. The state average is 1,430 for every provider.
Within the northeast, Plainfield and Killingly are home to the lowest rates of health care utilization in the region. In 2020, up to 37% of adults in these areas had not been to a dentist within the past year and up to 27% did not have an annual checkup in 2021, according to a DataHaven report on the 17 towns that make up the Northeastern Connecticut Council of Governments.
From rural parts of Putnam, Plainfield and Killingly to more urban areas in Norwich and New London, the Generations Mobile Health Unit travels each week to apartment complexes, community centers, YMCAs, schools, farms and other local hubs to provide dental and medical care in places where traditional health facilities are out of reach, either physically or financially.
[....] A 12-year study published by the National Library of Medicine found that between 2005 and 2016, the rate of ER visits in rural hospitals rose by 75%, outpacing hospitals in urban settings whose ER visit rates rose by 6% over the same period. The researchers noted that the rise in rural ER use was particularly apparent among Medicare beneficiaries and uninsured patients. By the final year of the study, rural hospitals in the U.S. had 65 visits per 100 persons in their ERs, urban hospitals had 43. [....]
Link:
https://theday.com/news/728540/a-mobile-solution-to-rural-health-barriers-in-connecticuts-northeast/
