Rural Hospital Administrators: The Rural Health Transformation Program Isn’t Helping, Yet

Filed 12h ago · Via Daily Yonder · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

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The Rural Health Transformation Program was billed as a cushion for rural hospitals absorbing Medicaid cuts under H.R. 1, but hospital administrators say the cushion has yet to arrive. CMS distributed roughly $200 million per state on average last December, but the funds went to states, not directly to hospitals, and states are still writing contracts and requests for proposal.

Kevin Stansbury, CEO of a hospital in Hugo, Colorado, says his facility could lose $1.5 million in revenue once the cuts fully take effect, in a town of 800 people serving an area the size of Connecticut. The National Rural Health Association's CEO concedes it's too early to see results but expects examples within 30 to 60 days.

Meanwhile Chartis, a healthcare consulting firm, estimates the program won't offset the nearly $140 billion in expected Medicaid-related losses. Rural hospitals, including Stansbury's, are already cutting services like OB/GYN care while they wait to see whether the promised transformation shows up.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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Half a trillion dollars sounds like a lot until you spread it across every rural hospital in the country and notice none of it actually goes to hospitals, it goes to states who then have to figure out what to do with it. A CEO in a town of 800 people is already cutting maternity care while everybody tells him to be patient. Around here we call that a check that's still in the mail a year after the bill came due.

Source: Read the original at Daily Yonder → Scored: Reign Supreme · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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