Host Sarah Jane Tribble checks in on Josh, the teenager who was coping with his aging grandparents and the emotional burden of his mother’s opioid death. Josh’s troubles began before Fort Scott’s hospital closed but worsened after. Sarah Jane gives Josh a call to find out his next steps.
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3:00
BONUS: Searching For The Nuns Who Ghosted Fort Scott
Host Sarah Jane Tribble sets out on a mission to understand the Sisters of Mercy, the nuns who founded Fort Scott’s Mercy Hospital. They were once prominent leaders of the community, but by the beginning of her reporting the nuns are gone. Sarah Jane’s first glimpse into their lives takes her to an old convent.
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3:25
A True Relief – Chapter 7
In Fort Scott, Kansas, the Community Health Center’s big green and white sign replaced Mercy Hospital’s name on the front of the town’s massive medical building. In the final chapter of Season One: No Mercy, we have an appointment to see what’s inside. We also meet wife and mother Sherise Beckham. She helps explain how much more difficult it can be to have a baby when a town loses full-service maternity care. Then, later when she gets a job, at — where else? — the health center, Beckham gives us a front-row seat to the new vision for health care in town.
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27:43
What I Was Raised And Taught To Do – Chapter 6
Trickle-down heartache reaches the next generation in a rural town with no hospital. Meet Josh. He’s a teenager in Fort Scott, Kansas, who dropped out of high school around the same time Mercy Hospital closed. He says those two things are related. The podcast also spotlights new health services now available in town. Mercy did not provide addiction or behavioral health services, but the new community health center in town does.
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28:31
Poppyseed Bread, Orange Glaze and Chemo – Chapter 5
Sixty-five-year-old Karen Endicott-Coyan is living with a blood cancer and she needs frequent chemotherapy. Before Mercy Hospital closed, she got her cancer care right in town. These days getting to chemo means a long trek on rural roads and narrow highways. The stress and frustration of traveling illuminates one reason cancer death rates are higher in rural America.
Place-based stories about the often painful cracks in the American health system that leave people frustrated and without the care they need. Hosted by investigative journalist Sarah Jane Tribble, the podcast is a production of Kaiser Health News and St. Louis Public Radio.