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Thursday, April 23, 2020

Feds to give $165 million to boost telehealth and help rural hospitals buy PPE and more testing equipment

The federal government "is awarding rural hospitals and telehealth resource centers nearly $165 million to combat the covid-19 pandemic," Susan Morse reports for Healthcare Finance. The money is meant to help hospitals purchase more personal protective equipment and boost testing capacity.

The funds are on top of the $100 billion allotted for hospitals and telehealth in the $2.1 trillion CARES Act. The new funding will go to 1,779 small, rural hospitals and 14 telehealth centers already funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, Morse reports.

On a recent call with reporters, Department for Health and Human Services "officials said that there could be variability from state to state, but on average each rural hospital will get about $84,000," Robert King reports for Fierce Healthcare. During the call, HHS also announced a new website aimed at helping health-care providers use telehealth and educate patients on how to use it.

HHS has already distributed $30 billion of the $100 billion promised in the CARES Act, prioritizing providers that had higher historical shares of revenue from Medicare reimbursements, not according to their covid-19 patient load, Kaiser Health News reports.  That tended to disproportionately help areas with more seniors, including rural areas. But Bruce Siegel, CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals, a group of systems serving the poor and vulnerable, told KHN that distributing the funds by Medicare income "could tilt the playing field" against hospitals serving mostly Medicaid patients.

Meanwhile, many rural hospitals are cash-strapped because they've been obliged to cancel elective procedures but don't have many covid-19 patients. "More money for hospitals is likely on the way. Congressional leaders have reached a deal for a $484 billion aid package that includes $75 billion for hospitals and another $25 billion for testing capacity," King reports.

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