North Dakota to receive $206 million in second year of Rural Health Transformation Program

(Valley News Live) — North Dakota has been awarded $206 million for the second year of a federal program meant to change how rural health care is delivered, the state’s congressional delegation announced Nov. 9.

Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer and Rep. Julie Fedorchak said the Rural Health Transformation Program could send North Dakota up to $1 billion over five years. The state was awarded nearly $200 million in the first year. The delegation’s announcement doesn’t say how the new money will be used.

First-year money is committed

The state Department of Health and Human Services has committed all of the first-year money, the delegation said. Most of it is going to the North Dakota Center for Rural Health, which will oversee grants to other recipients.

The delegation said the state also has programs in motion to upgrade clinical equipment, keep health care workers and support mobile mammography.

That first-year award was twice the program’s baseline, according to the delegation, which pointed to three things North Dakota did: it invested in statewide fiber optic infrastructure, built a network of new critical access hospitals and used telehealth and those hospitals to recruit and keep health care workers.

Fedorchak says the money won’t come again

Fedorchak called the funding a “one time” resource on top of the $200 million the state already received. She asked state leaders to “think big” and use it to “fundamentally rethink and retool” how health care is delivered, with a focus on access, quality and a cost the state can sustain.

Hoeven and Cramer each said the award builds on progress already made.

Announcement follows meeting with Kennedy

Before the announcement, the delegation met in North Dakota with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The delegation said the roundtable was meant to help his department, the state health department and North Dakota’s health care providers work together.

The delegation also said it helped create the program through the Working Families Tax Cut Act and supported Gov. Armstrong’s team’s application.