Smaller hospitals are in trouble also because the feds are requiring them to get expensive electronic medical record software, costing sometimes millions of dollars, software that has no proven advantages in terms of patient outcomes, but certainly sucks the dollars away from the patient and out of the bottom line. By the way, these software companies are big Obama and Democrat donors. Yet again, Obama and the dems favor the corporatists over the little guy.
Just like the dodd frank scam to kill all the small banks and consolidate so the gov has better access and control so goes the rural hospitals and crap care design.