Medical desert is a term used to describe regions where the population has inadequate access to healthcare. The term can be applied whether the lack of healthcare is general or in a specific field, such as dental or pharmaceutical. It is primarily used to describe rural areas, although it is sometimes applied to urban areas as well. The term is inspired by the analogous concept of a food desert.
An estimated 30 million Americans, many in rural regions of the country, live at least 60 minutes drive from a hospital with trauma care services. Limited access to emergency room services, as well as medical specialists, leads to increases in mortality rates and long-term health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. Regions with higher rates of Medicaid and Medicare patients, as well patients who are uninsured are less likely to live within an hour's drive of a hospital emergency room. Since 1975, over 1,000 hospitals, many in rural regions, have closed their doors, unable to bear the cost of care of uninsured patients, resulting in some patients in every state needing to drive at least an hour to a hospital emergency room, a problem that poses an even greater danger during the COVID-19 pandemic, when patients in respiratory distress urgently need oxygen and can ill afford an hour-long ambulance ride to reach a hospital. In addition to the immediate financial problems facing rural healthcare providers, inequities in rural healthcare are further aggravated by the disproportionately low amount of newly graduated doctors that apply for positions in rural areas. Although concentrated in rural regions, health care deserts also exist in urban and suburban areas, particularly in Black majority census tracts in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. Medical literature addressing health disparities in urban centers has applied the term medical desert to areas that are more than a five-miles from the nearest acute care facility. Racial demographic disparities in healthcare access are also present in rural areas, with Native Americans living in rural areas in particular receiving inadequate medical care.
