Rural Hospital Leaders Describe Early Experience With $50B Fund
Becker's Hospital Review reports that rural hospital executives at a CEO and CFO roundtable gave mixed but warming assessments of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. Leaders from Intermountain Health, North Carolina's health department, Eureka Springs Hospital in Arkansas, and ProMedica described uses ranging from a community paramedics program to telemedicine partnerships, while cautioning that funds are not a substitute for Medicaid revenue losses. North Carolina received about $213 million in year one and is focused on sustainability and avoiding duplicated asks across subrecipients. Leaders flagged risks including a one-year spending window, uncertainty over future-year funding, and the need for payers to eventually reimburse the innovations the money seeds.