"Health Services for Rural South Dakota" by Cooperative Extension South Dakota State University
 

Health Services for Rural South Dakota

Cooperative Extension South Dakota State University

This item was digitized with the support from Project CERES, a collaboration between USAIN, AgNIC, and the Center for Research Libraries.

Description

Health services have traditionally followed population concentrations. Two-thirds of the people in the United States are reported to live on ten per cent of the land area. The remaining one-third are widely dispersed over the remaining 90 per cent.

The distribution of physicians is even more unequal. In 1969 the population to physician ratio ranged from a low of 450 persons per physician in urban areas of 5 million or more inhabitants, to a high of 2,103 persons per physician in rural areas of less than 10,000 inhabitants. This is almost 5 times as many people per doctor in rural areas than in urban areas.