Residents of urban areas often have the same access-to-care problems as rural residents, although the latter receive far more attention.
So concludes a new report published on the Health Affairs Blog.
According to the analysis, urban and rural residents have similar access problems – and among urban residents, the problems in some instances are even greater.  One distinction:

…while rural America has access problems because there are not enough doctors, urban America has access problems because there are not enough appointments.

One potential solution to this problem, the report suggests, is focusing on access instead of geography and making telehealth services more available to rural and urban residents alike.  To date, most telehealth efforts have focused on serving residents of rural areas only.
Pennsylvania has safety-net hospitals in both urban and rural areas and many of the communities they serve have access-to-care problems that might benefit from greater access to telehealth services.
Learn more about the issue and this new perspective in the article “Giving Urban Health Care Access Issues The Attention They Deserve in Telemedicine Reimbursement Policies,” which can be found here, on the Health Affairs Blog.