When Kasey Shakespear broke his leg as a teenager, it took eight hours to get the care he needed.

For 35 minutes, he rode an ambulance from his hometown of Tropic, past Bryce Canyon’s red rock cliffs, to Garfield Memorial Hospital. X-rays confirmed the break, but doctors couldn’t perform the surgery to fix the snapped bone. That meant another two-hour ambulance ride south to St. George — a journey familiar to many rural Utahns who face long waits and longer drives just to get basic medical care.

“Accessing care in rural Utah requires so much more effort than it does for other people,” said Shakespear, who now serves as the director of the Rural Health Association of Utah.

The long drives, limited services and other difficulties may only get worse as changes to federal health programs

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