By State Affairs
It’s crunch time for states seeking to take advantage of a once-in-a-generation federal rural health grant program, state health officials and rural health experts said here last week.
States have only a matter of months to award the $200 million, on average, they received in the first year of the Rural Health Transformation Program, a fund created by Congress in 2025 and administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reverse what is widely understood to be a crisis in rural healthcare.
States that fail to show they made progress risk losing some of their share next year — or even seeing the money they already received clawed back by federal officials.
“This moved at the fastest pace I’ve ever seen a federal grant program move,” Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer for the National Rural Health Association said at the National Conference of State Legislatures annual summit.
