Year: 2020

EXCERPT: “The coronavirus pandemic, and efforts to slow its spread, has shuttered many government buildings. But cities and counties need to continue providing essential services, so many local governments are moving to remote, virtual meetings. For some, that’s meant putting meetings online for the first time. Others, like the city of Moorhead, have long broadcast ...

By Kelly Asche Before the COVID-19 crisis began, the Center for Rural Policy and Development was gathering information and analyzing the impacts mergers and acquisitions among health care providers have been having on access in rural areas. We were a few weeks away from releasing a report before the pandemic turned everyone’s lives upside down. ...

By Kelly Asche April, 2020 Many industries across Minnesota are being impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic. Unemployment is at historical highs. Among all the policies being passed, a top priority has been creating new programs to support the recently unemployed. Soon, however, leaders will begin pivoting their attention from emergency measures to developing policies and ...

By Julie Tesch I grew up in a small farming community that took community pride for the greater good seriously.  Like many towns, then and now, we would hold a blood drive three or four times a year at a church or the community center.  When I was a child, I would sometimes help out ...

EXCERPT: “A full quarter of rural hospitals in the U.S. are at a high risk of closing unless their financial situations improve, according to an annual Guidehouse analysis of publicly available data. The data examined by Guidehouse – formerly Navigant – was collected prior to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, meaning the situation is likely to get ...

Rural hospitals are waging war on declining revenues on two fronts: the shift in payment philosophy and the lack of patients during the pandemic. By Kelly Asche Before the COVID-19 crisis began, the Center for Rural Policy and Development was gathering information and analyzing the impacts mergers and acquisitions among health care providers have been ...

April 2020 By Kelly Asche, Research Associate & Marnie Werner, VP Research Note to readers: We were just getting ready to release this report when the COVID-19 pandemic showed up on Minnesota’s doorstep and everything changed. We believe the findings of our report still hold true since they review the past trends, but we have ...

EXCERPT: “The request has gotten caught up in a larger debate over the conversion of forests to potato fields in Minnesota’s Pineland Sands region, which covers Wadena, Cass, Becker and Hubbard counties. Nolte’s request came at a time of heightened concern over how widespread land use changes in the region — clearing forest to make ...

By Julie Tesch What a time to launch a podcast.  Little did we know that when we debuted our new podcast, Center of Everywhere, in March that we would be stepping into an unprecedented time with a global pandemic. The original goal of our podcast was to share our research on rural Minnesota and talk ...