BRUNSWICK — A woman traveling through Brunswick with her disabled son spent roughly 12 hours waiting for transportation, according a local business owner who watched the delay unfold.
Alicia Hurst, who owns a business in Brunswick, said the two eventually waited inside the Brunswick Police Department. Otherwise, she said, they could have been left to wait outside her business after it closed.
Across coastal Georgia, healthcare providers and residents say that kind of transportation failure can determine whether patients reach a specialist, keep an appointment or receive treatment before a manageable condition becomes an emergency.
Hurst was one of several people gathered at a recent health care roundtable held in Brunswick by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Bottoms, who was in the middle of a tour through Southeast Georgia, said struggles with transportation have come up at every stop where she’s campaigned.
“Even some of the service providers won’t go down dirt roads to pick up patients,” Bottoms said. “The state needs to invest. Point blank, plain and simple.”
Rick Jackson, the Republican nominee for governor and billionaire executive, has spent his entire professional career in the healthcare industry.
“He knows that access isn’t just about what a visit costs or whether or not you have coverage, it’s about whether you can actually access the care you need, and that’s especially true for families in rural and coastal Georgia,” said Jackson campaign spokesperson Garrison Douglas. “Rick is committed to expanding real health care options in rural Georgia so families aren’t forced to drive hours for basic care.”
Glynn County’s transportation problems unfold in an area where nearly 16% of residents under 65 lack health insurance and one-quarter of the population is 65 or older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 9% of working-age residents have a disability.
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With nearly 88,000 people spread across roughly 420 square miles — and some specialty care available only in Savannah, Jacksonville or farther away — even an insured patient can struggle to reach treatment.
For residents who rely on shared rides or limited rural transit, one appointment can consume an entire day.
Dr. Shirley Wilson, a Brunswick OB/GYN, discussed the difficulty of getting high-risk pregnant patients to maternal-fetal medicine specialists in larger cities.
“If you are going up to Savannah to see (a specialist), you’ve got to catch the ride, and then everybody going that way comes early in the morning, and everybody comes back late at night,” Wilson said.
Providers said transportation barriers often delay the less intensive care that could prevent a medical problem from becoming an emergency.
For example, Dr. Shontae Buffington, a Brunswick pediatrician, said that sometimes parents wait long times to get their children medical care because either they can’t afford the copay or they’re unable to travel to specialists.
“Sometimes, unfortunately, (parents) are blamed for not caring for their children. But that is often not it,” she said. “They don’t have the cash for the copay, they don’t have the ride, and then unfortunately they end up in our ER … sick, sick, sick.”
For many coastal Georgia patients, the question is not simply whether a doctor will see them. It is whether they can get there at all.
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