Rural Health Recommendations Sought for Federal Grant Application
(Sept. 2, 2025) LeadingAge NY is seeking member input for purposes of informing the State's application for federal funding under the recently enacted Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP). A total of $50 billion nationwide is appropriated for the RHTP ($10 billion for each federal fiscal year (FFY) from 2026 through 2030). Half of each annual appropriation ($5 billion) must be apportioned across the states with an approved RHTP application. The other half ($5 billion) may be apportioned in discretionary amounts across at least a quarter of the awarded states (the “Discretionary Amount”). Accordingly, if all 50 states apply and are approved for RHTP grant funding for each eligible year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would be required to award each state $100 million per year for FFY 2026 through FFY 2030. The remaining $5 billion annual appropriation would be apportioned in discretionary amounts among at least 13 states based on specified factors.
It is anticipated that the federal grant application will be available in mid-September, with a deadline for submission in November and awards in December. LeadingAge NY will be participating in a NYS Department of Health (DOH) stakeholder meeting this week to provide input into the State's application. The association seeks recommendations from members on potential uses of these funds to support the long-term/post-acute care continuum, consistent with the parameters of the program.
The strategic goals of the program are:
- Make Rural America Healthy Again
- Prevention/chronic disease management
- Behavioral health
- Sustainable Access
- Appropriate care availability
- Provider payments (cannot supplant or modify payments for insurance-reimbursable clinical services)
- Workforce Development
- Innovative Care
- Tech Innovation
- Consumer tech solution
- Training and technical assistance
- Information technology (IT) advances
Funds must be used for three or more of the following health-related activities:
- Promoting evidence-based, measurable interventions to improve prevention and chronic disease management.
- Providing payments to health care providers for the provision of health care items or services, as specified by the Administrator.
- Promoting consumer-facing, technology-driven solutions for the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
- Providing training and technical assistance for the development and adoption of technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals, including remote monitoring, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies.
- Recruiting and retaining clinical workforce talent to rural areas, with commitments to serve rural communities for a minimum of five years.
- Providing technical assistance, software, and hardware for significant IT advances designed to improve efficiency, enhance cybersecurity capability development, and improve patient health outcomes.
- Assisting rural communities to right-size their health care delivery systems by identifying needed preventative, ambulatory, pre-hospital, emergency, acute inpatient care, outpatient care, and post-acute care service lines.
- Supporting access to opioid use disorder treatment services, other substance use disorder treatment services, and mental health services.
- Developing projects that support innovative models of care that include value-based care arrangements and alternative payment models, as appropriate.
- Additional uses designed to promote sustainable access to high-quality rural health care services, as determined by the Administrator.
Recommendations and priorities for these funds, consistent with the parameters above, should be submitted to Darius Kirstein here, by Wed., Sept. 3rd.