Support to grow their health care workforce, including new or expanded medical education programs to attract doctors and nurses.
Doing more to address chronic medical conditions.
Better coordination of care and greater use of technology.
Making greater use of telehealth.
Improving the local transportation infrastructure as a means of improving access to care.
These are among the ideas that health care officials from almost every state discussed recently at a networking workshop held last week by the Health Policy Futures Lab to discuss how states might approach crafting proposals seeking a portion of the first half of the $50 billion in Rural Health Transformation Program money that the federal government will award before the end of the year.
The program, created under the FY 2026 budget reconciliation bill (the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act), seeks to ameliorate some of the anticipated damage to be caused by changes in Medicaid and other federal health care policy enacted under that bill and especially to help improve access to quality health care in rural areas of the country.
Learn more about the event and the strategies and approaches participants discussed from the Fierce Healthcare article “For CMS’ $50B rural health fund, states are prioritizing existing needs alongside lasting investment.”