A little less than a year ago, H.R. 1, or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) was signed into law. We’ve written about some of the significant, negative impacts that the H.R. 1 will have on health care systems, and how these impacts will hit home harder here than in other states and regions.
Another program that was created by H.R. 1 was the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP). The RHTP is a $50 billion dollar fund that the federal government will distribute across all eligible states – these funds will be distributed on a year-by-year basis, with stringent reporting and eligibility requirements.
Last year, every state, including Oregon, applied for RHTP funds, and every state was conditionally awarded these funds for Year 1. Oregon was awarded $197.3M for Year 1.
Under federal law, RHTP funding can be spent only on certain key initiatives but, critically, cannot be used to supplant lost Medicaid dollars.
Oregon’s Rural Health Transformation Program
Each state that was awarded funding under the RHTP was given an opportunity to design its own program, within allowable parameters, to distribute to rural health care provider, systems, community health programs and other eligible recipients.
Oregon’s RHTP program is divided into three categories of funding:
- Immediate Impact Awards – non-competitive awards made by OHA for a dozen, shovel-ready projects. A list of these projects can be found here.
- Transformation Awards – non-competitive, direct awards of $963,000 to $1,394,000 made to some rural hospitals across the state for specific projects.
- Catalyst Awards – competitive process for applicants to seek funding of up to $5M per proposal, per year, to advance on of several initiatives.
Oregon’s RHTP program generally focuses on four initiatives:
- Healthy Communities & Prevention
- Workforce Capacity & Resilience
- Technology & Data Modernization
- Regional Partnerships
Within these initiatives, applicants further must focus on how their project will serve maternal and child health; co-occurring BH conditions; individuals aging in place; and/or chronic disease.
What is Asante doing?
Asante has submitted requests for two types of funding –
- Transformation Awards for Ashland Community Hospital and Three Rivers Medical Center.
- Catalyst Awards for projects:
- Expanding medical education capabilities, in partnership with Rogue Community College, that will benefit the entire region.
- Expansion of Cancer Services and addition of urology services in Josephine County that will bring much needed services to the local community, as well as the neighboring counties.
We’ll provide additional details on the projects that we’re hoping to secure funding for in a subsequent post, as well as challenges that we’ve faced in participating in this process.
