Rural Health
From rolling prairies in the east to towering mountains and mesas in the west, Colorado’s rural hospitals are cornerstones of the communities they serve.
Of Colorado’s 88 acute care hospitals, half are in rural or frontier counties. Colorado has:
32 Critical Access Hospitals
11 Rural PPS Hospitals
Rural hospitals are the economic engines of their communities, often serving as the largest employer and an anchor to recruit or retain other businesses, schools, and other organizations, and offering $4.9B in rural community benefit. A hospital in rural Colorado provides up to 20% of the county’s employment and income. One physician employed in a rural hospital creates $1.4M in income for the facility and supports an additional 26 jobs.
Colorado’s Rural Hospitals by the Numbers
In 2022, rural hospitals in Colorado:
- Cared for nearly 35,000 inpatients, delivered 5,120 babies, and stabilized 313,336 people in the ED
- Employed 16K community members
- Invested nearly $5B in community benefit
What’s the difference between rural and frontier?
Did you know that of Colorado’s 64 total counties, 24 are designated as rural and 23 are designated as frontier. But what does that mean? Rural counties are defined as a non-metropolitan county containing no municipalities over 50,000 residents. Frontier counties are defined as a county with a population density of six or fewer residents per square mile.
Demographics of Rural Colorado
- 719,343 or 12.2% of the state’s population lives in rural and frontier areas of the state.
- The rural per capita income is $63,508 as compared with $70,706 for the state as a whole.
- The poverty rate in rural Colorado is 12.2%, compared with 9.4% in urban areas of the state.
- 8.7% of the rural population has not completed high school, while 7.5% of the urban population lacks a high school diploma.
- The unemployment rate in rural Colorado is 3.1%, while in urban Colorado, it is 3.0%.
- Rural reliance on public payers (Medicare and Medicaid) for health care coverage is significantly higher (45.8%) than for urban areas of the state (37.1%).
