RUGBY – Rugby residents gathered at the Cobblestone Inn on Tuesday, March 17, for a stakeholder’s meeting to hear from North Dakota legislators and state employees regarding how millions of dollars in federal funding will be deployed to fortify rural healthcare.

The Rural Health Transformation Program is supported by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of a financial assistance award to North Dakota totaling $198.9 million, a part of a total of $1 billion over the next five years.

North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Commissioner Emily O’Brien broke down how the first year of funding would be allocated, including $44.4 million to strengthen and stabilize the rural healthcare workforce, $19.2 million to make North Dakota Healthy Again, $101.4 million to bring high quality healthcare closer to home and $33.9 million to connect technology, data and providers.

ND HHS announced the first funding opportunity from the RHTP to support the retention of healthcare professionals in North Dakota’s 37 critical access hospitals and their owned and operated clinics. O’Brien explained the funding opportunities must be awarded by Sept. 30, 2027.

O’Brien said the funding allocated to rural health workforce stabilization would build a training pipeline involving the University of North Dakota’s Medical School and North Dakota State University Pharmacy program to develop physician residency training programs and promote healthcare career paths to middle and high school students throughout the state.

About $10 million in federal funding is available in the first year for critical access hospitals and their owned and operated clinics to implement strategies such as retention bonus; tuition reimbursement and training and career advancement; child care partnerships; workplace wellness programs; mentorship and professional development programs.

Dustin Hager, Heart of America Medical Center chief operating officer, sought clarity from O’Brien about how the priorities of the program were decided, opining that primary care provider mobile vans discussed by O’Brien would have impacts on rural medical centers.

“From the local hospital standpoint, if you’re going to deploy primary care vans going out to locations, how that doesn’t impact local healthcare services, if we’ve not been part of the conversations on care delivery?” Hager asked. “That’s what I’m struggling with. There’s been so much talk about how these dollars will be available, but we’ve never had these conversations about how the local healthcare community can be a part of that infrastructure. If I understand you correctly, a lot of different things are being talked about, but a lot of stakeholders are being left out.”

O’Brien said the program’s pillars and priorities came from listening sessions and surveys conducted last summer, and additional surveys with critical access hospitals regarding workforce needs were planned.

“That’s where we really need stakeholder engagement, because it’s going to be different everywhere in the state,” O’Brien said. “How do we work together to meet the needs and outcomes we want to drive forward?”

Rep. Jon Nelson, R-Rugby, also responded, saying the mobile vans also could be used to provide dental care to rural communities and schools, depending on their needs.

O’Brien explained that rural health providers should prepare applications for the workforce retention incentives to the state by April 30 to ensure everything is ready and correct for the September CMS deadline. A data dashboard will be made available to provide the public with the most accurate and up to date information.

“We want to be able to start deploying these dollars quickly, especially with the turnaround time,” O’Brien said. “We’re really trying to make sure this process is easy and seamless, and if it seems like it’s not, we need to know. Because we want to make sure we are good partners, but also having those metrics and outcomes back to CMS.”