Texas has applied for $1 billion in federal funding to address rural health care needs - $200 million each year for the Rural Health Transformation program for five years.
The “Rural Texas Strong” project is built on several initiatives ranging from addressing provider shortages and implementing artificial intelligence processes into rural health care.
According to the Texas Tribune, Claire Stieg, with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said the state submitted its application and is now in the hands of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The Texas project has six initiatives which include initiatives to invest in technology for patients to engage in improving care, upgrade equipment in rural hospitals and clinics and recruit and retain rural health care workers.
The Rural Health Transformation program is a one-time investment of $50 billion over the course of five years. That means CMS will distribute $10 billion each year among all the states in the program.
Half of that money is considered “baseline funding” and is split evenly between participating states. The other half is “workload funding” awarded to states based on their applications and “rural factors,” like population of rural residents and number of rural counties.
Texas has 4.3 million rural residents, according to the funding application. Of the state’s 254 counties, the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy identified 241 with at least one census areathat’s considered rural – and 195 are considered fully rural.
The state’s application will be reviewed by a panel of federal and subject matter experts before CMS let states know how much they will receive. CMS has until the end of 2025 to make that announcement. Funding is expected to be distributed starting in January.
The state’s application explained Texas expects to see various benefits from the implementation of the Rural Texas Strong project, including more than 1,000 additional rural health professionals, mitigation of chronic disease and reduced duplicative health care costs.