Health crisis as many rural emergency rooms now have no doctors [View all]

Source: Raw Story

August 12, 2025 10:35AM ET


EKALAKA, Mont. — There was no doctor on-site when a patient arrived in early June at the emergency room in the small hospital at the intersection of two dirt roads in this town of 400 residents. There never is.

Dahl Memorial’s three-bed emergency department — a two-hour drive from the closest hospital with more advanced services — instead depends on physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

Physician assistant Carla Dowdy realized the patient needed treatment beyond what the ER could provide, even if it had had a doctor. So, she made a call for a medical plane to fly the patient to treatment at Montana’s most advanced hospital. Dowdy also called out medications and doses needed to stabilize the patient as a paramedic and nurses administered the drugs, inserted IV lines, and measured vital signs.

Emergency medicine researchers and providers believe ERs, especially in rural areas, increasingly operate with few or no physicians amid a nationwide shortage of doctors.

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/experts-say-rural-emergency-rooms-are-increasingly-run-without-doctors/