Trinity pursues grants to enhance healthcare
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The grant opportunities associated with a new federal program to strengthen healthcare in rural communities could make a real difference in the Minot region, according to Trinity Health Foundation.
North Dakota received nearly $200 million from the Rural Health Transformation Program, with the potential to receive $1 billion over five years. The state gradually has been releasing grant applications targeted to key areas of healthcare concern in rural areas.
Dusty Zimmerman, director of the Trinity Health Foundation, said the foundation is examining the applications to identify those that are strategically aligning with Trinity's needs and direction.
"We’ve applied for about six of the opportunities that have become available," she said. "We’re currently working on a few others that haven’t closed yet."
The state already has awarded the foundation $273,150 for workforce retention and leadership training at the Trinity Health Kenmare Hospital.
Zimmerman said Trinity's Human Resources team is working with Kenmare Hospital leadership to develop a plan for utilizing those dollars. Details still are being worked out, but retention bonuses for extended job commitments are expected to be part of that plan, she said.
Staff retention is more challenging in smaller communities, affecting operations across the board, Zimmerman said. Along with nursing and other medical personnel shortages facing all small hospitals, Trinity recently struggled to fill a facilities position in Kenmare, she said.
Trinity also is working with an outside partner to bring organizational leadership and management training to Kenmare.
"Those are also really important things when it comes to retention - making sure that your staff has the tools that they need to do their jobs," Zimmerman said.
The state is required to allocate the grant by September and Trinity has until September 2027 to spend the dollars.
Trinity Health in Minot also is eligible for some of the grants under the rural definition in RHTP. The foundation recently applied for a grant for medical equipment.
"The equipment area is really the one that we were excited about, because equipment is so expensive," Zimmerman said. "That’s probably our greatest area of need.
"We submitted a list of equipment needs that we have, and several of those things on our priority list are pieces of equipment that would allow us to do procedures that we currently aren’t able to do here, which is one of the initiatives of the program," she said.
A couple of Trinity's equipment needs are in gastroenterology and in the retinal field in ophthalmology. Zimmerman stressed the significance a grant could make, noting the gastroenterology project alone is priced at around $1 million.
Zimmerman said Trinity leadership began thinking last fall about the services that people must leave the community to receive and ways to enable them to stay local. In the case of gastroenterology, Trinity providers have the skills and experience to offer more but lack the equipment, she said.
The foundation also applied for grant funds related to mobile unit service. Zimmerman said Trinity serves some rural towns with community clinics, but it sees a need for a mobile unit to bring vaccinations and primary care into other smaller communities that lack health services. The elderly population, in particular, would benefit because often they aren't able to travel for care, she said.
The foundation also plans to apply for an electronic records grant for Trinity Homes.
"They need some enhancements to their system, so it's good timing to do that," Zimmerman said. She noted nursing home electronic records differ from those of a hospital or clinic but the goal is to increase the compatibility among the facilities.
"Any opportunity to gather better data and better documentation creates safer environments and more efficiencies," Zimmerman said. "It just, in general, leads to better care when you know that your data is accurate."
Another grant round that has been welcomed by the foundation is one targeted toward wellness of the community and healthcare staff.
"Wthin the organization, we do have wellness centers and facilities for our staff to utilize, and we would look to enhance that out at the new healthcare campus. We would like to install a walking path that can be used by the neighborhood, by staff, by families, by maybe even patients and the therapy units," Zimmerman said. "Within the community, we’ve always done several doc walks every summer, and usually that’s Dr. (Dawn) Mattern in leading those. We would look to really enhance that and create kind of a program with a year-round walking element, maybe some competition, tracking steps and all those fun things to really kind of get the community engaged."
The location of the hospital in southwest Minot is growing, and Zimmerman said the neighborhood can use more amenities to encourage exercise and use of the outdoors.
"Having a walking path, a playground area, would be beneficial to those neighbors in that area, and we also know our staff would utilize that for breaks and lunch time. If the dollars are there, we would also look to add some other features throughout that would generate some more exercise opportunities along the walking path," she said.
Access to wellness programs are more limited for Kenmare Hospital staff, although there is a community fitness facility. Zimmerman said using RHTP funds for gym memberships is one of the options being looked at in drafting an application for Kenmare.
The foundation is waiting to hear more about future grants rounds. Zimmerman said among potential grant areas that would be of interest include funding for child care to improve recruitment of staff and funding for ambulance services.
At the top of the list for smaller, critical access hospitals is facility upgrades.
"A lot of the critical access hospitals are older. Unfortunately, as it stands right now, the program does not include new construction. We’ve heard that they may be looking at changing that down the road, but we know that, specifically for Kenmare, that’s one of the areas that we would hope maybe could be an opportunity in the future," Zimmerman said.
The state has identified goals for its RHTP funds that include rebuilding and retaining a rural health workforce, preventing chronic disease and reducing costs, bringing high-quality care closer to home and gaining efficiencies with modern technology and data.
The RHTP is administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is allocating the $50 billion appropriated by Congress for 2026 through 2030. States submitted applications at the end of 2025 is determining their share of program funds.