Opinion: The Rural Health Transformation Program challenges states to build and overhaul systems

R.J. Marse

When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced $50 billion in funding for the Rural Health Transformation Program, many Americans may have assumed the money would help struggling rural hospitals shore up their finances and stay open. 

But RHTP program dollars aren't meant to prop up declining systems by helping them maintain the status quo of rural health care, writes R.J. Marse, General Counsel at Sprinter Health, in his opinion for Healthcare IT Today. "At $50 billion over five years. . . the amount is significant, but more noteworthy is the program’s intent."

The program aims to change how rural health care is approached and practiced by incentivizing innovation, technology and successful outcomes across a system.

RHTP challenges rural health systems to go beyond traditional health care infrastructure by designing and launching treatment that includes "telehealth and remote monitoring. . . technology-enabled solutions that allow providers to practice at the top of their license," Marse writes. "It even allows states to invest in early-stage healthcare companies, a signal that the ultimate goal is innovation."

Marse explains, "Funding is conditioned on outcomes, so while the aim is to reach more rural patients in more rural communities, interventions will need to do so in ways that measurably improve health and lower long-term costs."

RHTP structural demands push rural health care systems to combine modern medical treatment models with the inherent challenges of working with a rural population. Marse writes, "RHTP demands confronting the fact that many rural patients will not engage with care unless it comes to them – or, at least, closer to them. . . . Rural care transformation must, by necessity, be hybrid. It should deliver care virtually when appropriate, and physically when and where it’s needed."

"Rural health doesn’t need another bailout. It needs fundamentally different operating models that can endure when federal dollars dissipate," Marse explains. "Five years from now, RHTP will be judged not by how much money was spent, but by what was built."