Cowley woman represents Wyoming as Congress explores ways to improve medical care for rural Americans

LOVELL — When Cowley resident Sharon McCracken received an unexpected phone call asking if she would be willing to travel to Washington, D.C., to speak before a congressional panel about rural healthcare, her first reaction wasn’t excitement.

“It was very uncomfortable to me,” McCracken said. “I just don’t like being in the limelight.”

But after learning she had been invited to represent the experiences of rural patients in Wyoming, she agreed.

“I just wanted to tell what it’s like to live in a rural setting,” she said.

McCracken was one of only two individuals invited to participate in a briefing hosted by the Senate Rural Health Caucus titled Expanding Rural Access to Clinical Trials: How Congress Can Improve Rural Health. The discussion brought together congressional staff members, policymakers and healthcare leaders to better understand the challenges facing people who live far from major medical centers.

Her visit came as Congress begins implementing a new $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program designed to strengthen healthcare systems in rural states. Wyoming is expected to receive one of the nation’s largest per capita allocations because of its vast geography, aging population and limited access to specialty care.

Some lawmakers from larger states have questioned why Wyoming, with fewer than 600,000 residents, should receive funding comparable to states with populations many times larger. McCracken believes the answer becomes obvious when people understand what rural residents face simply to receive medical care.

“It’s what you do here,” she said. “You live in a rural area. You take care of yourself, your family, and your friends take care of you. But you travel to Billings or Denver or Salt Lake to get care. That’s just what we do.”

Like many residents of the Big Horn Basin, McCracken found herself traveling from community to community while searching for specialists and appointments. Although those trips have become routine for many Wyoming families, she said the experience helped her realize just how difficult accessing healthcare can be.

“Going there made me realize it even more,” she said. “You’re talking about three hours of travel, hours at the doctor’s office, fuel costs, meals and sometimes an overnight stay. Those are the things they wanted to know about.”

The panel focused less on individual medical conditions and more on the realities of living hundreds of miles from specialized care.

McCracken described the long waits many rural residents face before seeing specialists, the challenges of finding transportation, shortages of emergency medical services and the difficult choices families make between waiting months for an appointment or driving several hours to another city.

She also shared stories from others in the community.

One example involved an elderly woman whose husband lives in a care center that’s miles away. Because she no longer drives and we have no public transportation, ride-sharing services or taxis available, visiting him has become extremely difficult.

“They were just amazed,” McCracken said. “They don’t realize we don’t have Ubers or Lyfts or buses.”

She explained that while rural communities often rely on neighbors, churches and family members to help one another, those support systems cannot replace accessible healthcare.

“I did tell them we have a tight-knit community,” she said. “Churches and family and friends help each other and take care of each other. But it’s not the same.”

Another issue she emphasized was emergency medical transportation.

“In Wyoming, an ambulance is often considered a helicopter,” she told the group, illustrating the unique realities of emergency care across the state’s vast distances.

Following the presentation, congressional staff members stayed to ask additional questions about rural life in Wyoming. Many said they had never considered the distances residents routinely travel for healthcare or the transportation barriers facing older adults.

McCracken also met with U.S. Sen. John Barrasso.

Barrasso told her he intends to continue fighting to ensure Wyoming receives its fair share of federal rural healthcare funding and emphasized the importance of investing those dollars

wisely to improve healthcare access across the state.

Although she initially questioned whether she had much to contribute, McCracken left Washington convinced her experiences had made a difference.

“I don’t know that I took it for granted,” she said of rural healthcare. “I think I just thought, ‘This is the way it is because we choose to live here.’” 

The trip changed that perspective.

“It did make me want to come home and try to make changes,” she said. “It made me want to create awareness. How can we help our hospital get some of this money? How can we help the Big Horn Basin?”

For McCracken, the journey wasn’t about telling her own story as much as it was giving a voice to thousands of Wyoming residents whose biggest healthcare challenge often isn’t the treatment itself, but simply getting there.