As states begin to deploy billions of dollars from the Rural Health Transformation Program, hospital and health system CFOs are shaping ideas to put those funds to use.
For Marco Priolo, vice president and CFO of UM Upper Chesapeake Health in Bel Air, Md., a member of Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical System, the funds have allowed the organization to focus on addressing primary care and behavioral health access.
UM UCH is a community-based, nonprofit health system that comprises the UM Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air and UM Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Aberdeen. It also has a wellness center, a cancer center, an ambulatory care center, a surgery center, and around 3,000 employees, according to a fact sheet from the system.
“We prioritized initiatives that delivered on a smaller scale and could be efficiently expanded across the University of Maryland Medical System,” Mr. Priolo told Becker’s. “This led us to leverage our virtual health capabilities, population health infrastructure and embedded behavioral health resources in primary care supported by telehealth.”
States are rolling out the funding at different levels. Maryland’s $168 million allocation spans 16 tracked funding opportunities, and the state has now moved into the agreement/awarded stage for some entries, according to the National Rural Health Association’s website.
Mr. Priolo said amid reimbursement pressures and tighter margins, the system has placed emphasis on scalable models to stretch scarce clinical resources and expand access.
“Our goal is to use these dollars not just to fund programs, but to build sustainable care delivery models that will continue to benefit our rural communities,” he said.
