ArticleFuture healthcare journal2020
The problems of smaller, rural and remote hospitals: Separating facts from fiction.
Article in Future healthcare journal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Reducing outpatient wait times through telemedicine: a systematic review and quantitative analysis.BMJ open · 2025Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Operating in recurrent crises: a qualitative study of decision-making and unintended consequences in a peripheral hospital.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Intelligence Architectures and Machine Learning Applications in Contemporary Spine Care.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Monitoring patient pathways at a secondary healthcare services through process mining via Fuzzy Miner.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2025Article
- Provision of medical same day emergency care services within the UK: analysis from the Society for Acute Medicine Benchmarking Audit.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Role of general practitioner-led rural community hospitals in Sweden: a qualitative study.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Characteristics and Factors Influencing Clinical Pharmacy Services in Small Hospitals in British Columbia: A Theory-Informed Survey.The Canadian journal of hospital pharmacy · 2025Article
- Prevalence and determinants of skilled birth attendance among young women aged 15-24 years in Northern Nigeria: evidence from multiple indicator cluster survey 2011 to 2021.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Predictors of Medical and Dental Clinic Closure by Machine Learning Methods: Cross-Sectional Study Using Empirical Data.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Surgical mentorship in low-resource environments: Opportunities and challenges, a perspective.Health science reports · 2024Article
- Inpatient midwifery staffing levels and postpartum readmissions: a retrospective multicentre longitudinal study.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Association between prevalence of laboratory-identifiedInfection control and hospital epidemiology · 2022Article
- Including a wider range of values in healthcare policy: how can public value evaluation help?Future healthcare journal · 2022Article
- Factors Associated with Website Operation among Small Hospitals and Medical and Dental Clinics in Korea.Healthcare informatics research · 2022Article
- Beyond patient care: a qualitative study of rural hospitals' role in improving community health.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Impact of a Regional Campus on the Placements of Students at Rural Pharmacy Experiential Sites.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Administration of Strategic Agreements in Public Hospitals: Considerations to Enhance the Quality and Sustainability of Mergers and Acquisitions.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Smaller hospitals internationally are under threat. The narratives around the closure of smaller hospitals, regardless of size and location, are all constructed around three common problems - cost, quality and workforce. The literature is reviewed, demonstrating that there is little hard evidence to support the contention that hospital merger/closure solves these problems. The disbenefits of mergers and closures, including loss of resources, increased pressure on neighbouring organisations, shifting risk from the healthcare system to patients and their families, and the threat hospital closure represents to communities, are explored. Alternative structures, policies and funding mechanisms, based on the evidence, are urgently needed to support smaller hospitals in the UK and elsewhere.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.