Here is a sentence I wish someone would carry into every room where rural health care gets decided: the best care is often the care that stays home, and it costs the system less, not more. I have spent my…
Finance & Funding
Most health systems that launch insurance arms do so to capture margin. Albert Wright Jr. built one to give it away. Peak Health, a provider-sponsored health plan created by Morgantown, W.Va.-based WVU Medicine, is structured as a joint venture with…
States are earmarking specific slices of their Rural Health Transformation Program dollars for technology upgrades, service expansions and workforce pipeline development. CMS has announced 15 such efforts over the past month. Each state’s full fiscal year 2026 award was set…
Cullman (Ala.) Regional Medical Center — Alabama’s largest independent rural hospital — is launching an outreach program to help other community hospitals improve financial and operational performance. The outreach program is designed to help rural hospitals add local care services,…
Hawaii will receive $58 million through the Rural Health Transformation Program to bolster the state’s healthcare workforce, purchase new ambulances and upgrade emergency communications systems. Hawaii will distribute $45 million to the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of…
Advertisement
Rural hospitals serve populations with greater need, fewer resources and less margin for error than almost any other type of healthcare institution. The CFOs who steward their finances are making the decisions that keep these organizations financially viable. Through disciplined…
The prevailing debate over HR-1’s Rural Health Transformation Program has centered on what the program won’t deliver. Some rural leaders have raised questions about whether the $50 billion initiative will reach the providers it was designed to support; separate concerns…
For Sutter North Medical Group, the math of rural healthcare in California is challenging. Travel north or west from Yuba City, and commercial insurance coverage drops precipitously — from roughly 40% of patients to 20% or below. The populations that…
The Maryland Department of Health awarded $80 million to 41 grantees in the first round of funding under the Rural Health Transformation Program, Gov. Wes Moore announced Aug. 10. The awards fund projects to expand primary care, behavioral health and…
Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth Health has received an $11.8 million federal grant to establish the Center for Aging with Serious Illness, a multidisciplinary research program focused on older adults with serious illness. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of…