What is Rural?
There are many definitions of "rural". Often, rural is defined simply as "not urban" or "not metropolitan". The US census bureau defines "urban" as "places of more than 2500 people". Rural then becomes a town of fewer than 2500 people. The US Office of Management and Budget defines a "metropolitan area" as "core area containing a large population nucleus, together with adjacent communities having a high degree of economic and social integration with that core."
Because rural areas routinely include many people who live outside of the "town" proper, other define a rural area as one with a population of under 25,000 which is 25 or more miles from an urban center.
For our purposes, we are content to define a place as medically "rural" if the healthcare system there is mainly managed by primary care physicians and allied healthcare providers without ready access to subspecialists.
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