A hop, skip and a jump

The disparities between rural and urban healthcare are no secret. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 46 million Americans live in rural areas and due to living in these locations, have less access to healthcare.

Darin W. Allred is all too familiar with this issue as he travels from one rural town to another to provide orthopedic care where it is needed. Though he now lives in Salt Lake City, Allred spent 15 years in Denver as an orthopedic surgeon working for Kaiser Permanente. The decade-and-a-half he spent working in suburbia allowed Allred to become "uber-specialized" in orthopedic surgery.

Eventually, however, Allred said he got bored. Around the same time, he had obtained his pilot's license. "One day I thought 'I wonder if I can live in a big town and fly to small towns and be a surgeon'," said Allred.

According to Allred, most rural hospitals are on a tight budget and can't afford specialized surgeons. They hire physicians who are near the end of their career or have retired to try to fill the gaps in rural healthcare. If that's not feasible, they send patients to hospitals in metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City or Denver.

Allred isn't quite a locum tenens physician: those who travel from state to state filling in during the absence of other healthcare providers or provide additional care when there is more demand than supply. Instead, he provides a much needed service to rural hospitals on a regular basis.

Memorial Hospital of Carbon County is just one of a number of places which benefit from Allred's visits. The orthopedic surgeon also visits Rock Springs and Afton, Wyoming; Paige, Arizona and Ely, Nevada.

In his experience, serving both rural and urban patients, Allred feels that those in rural areas are more appreciative of his services. Allred said this is partly because their needs are more severe than those in urban areas. A patient in an urban setting will likely seek medical attention sooner for an issue than a patient in a rural setting.

If there is one downside to being a flying orthopedic surgeon, it is heading back to his home base in Salt Lake City after a surgery said Allred. While he does the best job he can, Allred said he is still human and worries about making mistakes. As a traveling surgeon, his visits to patients are more infrequent than if he was in one place.

Still, Allred enjoys traveling to rural areas. "Rural patients are just better," said Allred. "They're more appreciative, they're farther along in their pathology, so when you fix them they're more grateful."