The conversation with Mayor Adam O’Neal of Belhaven, NC, continues. Mayor O’Neal is a tenacious fighter for rural hospitals as demonstrated in his story about the plight of his community’s efforts to reopen their closed hospital. “… when you’re talking healthcare, especially in the aspect of a hospital, you’re talking about people getting lifesaving services that they need,” said Mayor O’Neal. “Now we have people having heart attacks, strokes, severe accidents, snake bites, not being able to get service anymore.”
Mayor Adam O’Neal, Mayor of Belhaven, NC, received national attention for walking 273 miles to Washington, DC, in protest of the closing of Belhaven’s only hospital. “This is the difference between our children having life-saving services or not,” said Mayor O’Neal. Mayor O’Neal’s story is both tragic and inspirational.
In this first episode of Rural Health Leadership Radio, Dr. Bill Auxier explains why he created this weekly podcast. Inspired by a conversation with the CEO of a critical access hospital in Florida, it became clear that a simple, no cost channel of communication for rural health leaders to share what is working, what is not working, stories of success and failures, and other aspects of the challenges rural health leaders face on a daily basis was sorely lacking. Rural Health Leadership Radio fills that communication void to assist rural health leaders achieve greatness and to improve healthcare in Rural America.