Quincy doctor says rural Illinois doesn’t have enough health workers, and the pandemic made it worse

Nearly every county in Illinois doesn’t have enough primary care, mental health and dental providers, according to a new report by the Rural Health Summit.

The issue is most acute in the state’s rural counties, including southern Illinois.

The report, produced by a consortium of health care professionals, finds the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated and illuminated the depth to Illinois’ rural health worker shortage.

“It showed a lot of people that there are a lot of issues that were under the surface for a long time and they came to the surface, and it kind of caused a crisis,” said Dr. Jim Daniels of Quincy, a family and preventive medicine physician with SIU Center for Family Medicine’s Quincy faculty, where he currently heads the Sports Medicine Fellowship

Speaking at a webinar Thursday about the report’s findings, Daniels said there’s a mismatch with the pipelines medical and government institutions have developed to get more doctors into rural areas.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on how we’re going to get someone to rural health, but maybe not a whole lot of time in the rural areas talking to folks saying, ‘What keeps folks there?’” he said. “If you say, ‘We’re going to pay your medical bills off,’ and then in about four or five years you haven’t bonded with the community, [so] you leave.”

ABOUT THE RURAL HEALTH SUMMIT
Southern Illinois University (SIU) Medicine Department of Population Science and Policy, SIU Paul Simon
Public Policy Institute, SIU Medicine Center for Rural Health and Social Service Development and University
of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health continued the work of the 2018 Illinois Rural Health Summit
and convened rural stakeholders for 11 discussion forums in late 2020 to better understand and address
the COVID-19 pandemic in rural Illinois. Using the 2019 report on the most pressing issues facing rural
Illinois as a foundation, 80 leaders from 55 organizations in diverse fields such as public health, health care,
academia, industry and government met virtually to discuss how the pandemic is creating new challenges
and fostering new innovation. Forums focused on rural economic development, health workforce, children’s
growth and development, nutrition and fitness, mental health, opioids, public health systems, caring for an
aging population and healthy housing. Discussion forums participants were also invited to an additional,
overarching session to identify common challenges and synthesize impactful solutions. The information,
anecdotes and issues raised in this report come from those conversations.