Dialysis is three days a week, for the rest of your life. For eleven people in Wayne County, the nearest open chair is seventy-five miles away.
What’s new: Yesterday, we broke ground on a new dialysis center at Wayne County Hospital, doubling it from five stations to ten — made possible by the more than $2 million federal investment we secured. Those eleven neighbors on the waiting list will finally have the care they need closer to home.
We also secured more than $37 million through Iowa’s Healthy Hometowns program: a radiation oncology center, funding to recruit more physicians, and a hub-and-spoke cancer network Wayne County is leading across four counties.
What we heard: Following the groundbreaking, I sat down with the doctors, nurses, and trustees who run this hospital, and I listened. The sharpest thing I heard all day came from their chief nursing officer: rural Iowa isn’t short on people who want to be nurses — it’s short on faculty to teach them.
Why it matters: Iowa needs an additional 85,000 care workers by 2032. The bigger challenge isn’t more funding — it’s a wider pipeline to recruit, train, and promote the staff who can put that funding to work helping patients. That’s the next fight, and it’s why I’m leading two bipartisan bills to train more nurses and doctors in the rural communities where they are needed most.
Bottom Line: Yesterday wasn’t just about breaking ground on a new building. It was about listening to the people who know rural healthcare best and turning what they shared into better policy. I’ll keep fighting to strengthen the pipeline of healthcare providers serving communities like Wayne County.