Sandego.net – In Hettinger, a prairie community of roughly 1,100 residents, the local hospital’s ability to serve patients increasingly depends on workers who have traveled thousands of miles to get there. West River Hospital employs 19 foreign-born professionals, including nurses, laboratory staff and an ultrasound technician from the Philippines.

The facility serves a broad rural area that reaches beyond southwest North Dakota into parts of Montana and South Dakota. For a small hospital located about two and a half hours from Bismarck, recruiting qualified medical personnel has become a persistent challenge as younger residents leave rural communities and health care vacancies remain difficult to fill.…