HHS on Wednesday awarded more than $160 million in COVID-19 relief funding for rural health providers, including nearly 1,800 small rural hospitals.
The funding is supposed to help rural hospitals expand telehealth, buy personal protective equipment and increase testing capacity. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act included $150 million "to assist hospitals funded through the Small Rural Hospital Improvement Program (SHIP) respond to this public health emergency," HHS said in a statement.
It works out to about $84,000 per provider, and funding will vary by state since some states are more rural than others. But more help is on the way now that that HHS announced that it would deliver another $40 billion in provider relief funds, including $10 billion for rural providers.
The CARES Act also included $11.5 million for 14 federally funded telehealth resource centers to provide hospitals with telehealth technical assistance.
Expanded telehealth services "will help these rural hospitals continue to be able to see the patients that currently are not coming into the hospitals," said Tom Engels, administrator for HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration, during a call with reporters. "That will help with the revenue stream that some of these hospitals are losing because patients are not coming in."
Yet many rural residents lack access to broadband internet, which could limit their ability to take advantage of newly available telehealth services, even if rural providers offer it.
"There are places where we do have significant gaps in terms of access to broadband, and you do need that for telehealth," said Tom Morris, associate administrator of HRSA's Federal Office of Rural Health Policy.
He pointed out that there are several federal efforts to increase broadband access in rural areas to support telehealth, including $200 million in CARES Act funding for the Federal Communications Commission to help eligible providers boost their telehealth capacity. Still, many experts don't there's anywhere near enough federal support to help rural providers expand telehealth services.
Rural hospitals have been devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak as already declining revenues dropped off a cliff. It's even worse in states that haven't expanded Medicaid because rural providers rely heavily on Medicaid.
"States that expanded Medicaid have seen uninsured rates for low-income adults in rural areas decline three times faster compared to states that haven't expanded Medicaid," according to Georgetown University professor Adam Searing.
Telehealth has been central to the Trump administration's healthcare strategy, and those efforts have accelerated during the administration's response to the coronavirus outbreak. Providers have rapidly adopted telehealth services thanks to new flexibilities provided by HHS. Industry stakeholders hope to make many of the changes permanent.
