{"id":29420,"date":"2024-07-08T23:26:28","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T04:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=29420"},"modified":"2024-07-08T23:26:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T04:26:32","slug":"nearly-half-of-u-s-counties-dont-have-a-single-cardiologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=29420","title":{"rendered":"Nearly half of U.S. counties don’t have a single cardiologist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Millions of Americans likely to develop and die from heart disease<\/a> live in cardiology deserts \u2014 areas of the country without a single heart specialist to care for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New research published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology<\/a> finds that nearly half of all counties in the U.S. lack a practicing cardiologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of those counties are rural, with residents who tend to be sicker in general with complex medical problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe counties that do not have cardiologists probably need this type of specialty care even more,\u201d said the study\u2019s senior author, Dr. Haider Warraich, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital in Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People living in those counties \u201chave a much higher prevalence of the entire spectrum of cardiovascular risk factors, including obesity, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warraich\u2019s study, conducted in partnership with the web-based pharmacy GoodRx, found that of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., 46.3% don’t have a cardiologist. Most of those, 86.2%, are rural counties with lower income levels, less access to healthy food and fewer health<\/a>\u2002<\/a>care providers overall<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And though heart disease is the nation\u2019s No. 1 killer<\/a>, people living in rural areas are dying earlier and more often from heart disease that could’ve been prevented, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report<\/a> published in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got small towns with high health needs and the inability to seek care,\u201d said Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of the National Rural Health Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Counties with cardiologists have an average of 24 of the specialists, the new report found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But 10% have just one cardiologist for the entire county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was this experience that fueled Warraich\u2019s interest in studying cardiovascular disparities. Before he took his job in Boston in 2019, he was the only cardiologist practicing in Randolph County, North Carolina, population 146,043<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had no backup. I had no colleague I could call,\u201d he said. \u201cI remember just knowing that the people who I was seeing had nowhere else to turn, that they were entirely dependent on me to be at my best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warraich\u2019s data shows that Randolph County now has five cardiologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A ‘workable solution’<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Living in a cardiology desert usually means having to travel farther for specialty heart care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new research found that people in counties with a cardiologist drive an average of 16 miles round trip for an appointment, compared to an 87-mile round trip, on average, for people without a local cardiologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s actually pretty good for a lot of our patients,\u201d said Dr. John Wagener, a structural interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Avera Heart Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. \u201cWe have people who live three, four hours away to come to see us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagener and a team of about 20 Avera Health cardiologists cover 86 counties in the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patients either drive for in-person appointments or, increasingly, see their cardiologists through telemedicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagener said his team also offers consultation with a vast number of both independent providers and those within the Avera Health network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m constantly talking with primary care physicians, nurse practitioners or physicians assistants who are managing our local emergency departments, critical care access facilities, urgent cares and primary care facilities,\u201d Wagener said. \u201cThey can not only ask us questions, but they can upload EKGs and telemetry reports [which look at heart rhythms] so we can give them the best guidance as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Steve Ommen, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said it\u2019s not necessarily the number of miles people have to travel for appointments that prevents them from getting the care they need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor people who have bad hips or bad backs, sometimes it\u2019s just a problem of getting out of the house,\u201d Ommen, also the medical director at Mayo\u2019s Center for Digital Health, said. In those cases, \u201cremote care can be the great equalizer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Morgan of the National Rural Health Association said that treating patients virtually<\/a> is a \u201cworkable solution moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis highlights the critical importance of expanding broadband in these communities and ensuring that we have enough telehealth platforms,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWe are never going to be able to get a sufficient number of cardiologists practicing in small towns across the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions of Americans likely to develop and die from heart disease live in cardiology deserts \u2014 areas of the country without a single heart specialist to care for them. New research published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that nearly half of all counties in the U.S. lack a practicing cardiologist. Most of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[29544,29543,9528,10241,29542],"class_list":["post-29420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-cardiologist","tag-cardiology","tag-lack","tag-practice","tag-specialist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29422,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29420\/revisions\/29422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}