Bridging Academic Medicine and Rural Care

Rural health care in Missouri is fragile, and Ric Ransom knows it firsthand. As CEO of MU Health Care, Ransom leads the University of Missouri's academic health system while navigating many of the same pressures — workforce shortages, reimbursement gaps, rising costs — that rural hospitals face at a different scale. He shares how his legal background shapes his approach to partnerships, why he describes the state of rural health care as "fragile," and how MU Health Care has responded when hospitals in Boonville, Fulton and Mexico closed. He also discusses expanding specialty care access, the promise and limits of technology, and why workforce investment is one of his biggest sources of optimism.