The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday $10.4 million in grants will be dispersed to rural health providers over three years.
The grants will help rural health providers meet the needs of their communities by being able to offer services including health promotion, disease prevention and oral and mental health services.
The grants totaling approximately $450,000 each are going to 70 recipients across the country. Funding for the grants comes from the Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program, said Nisha Patel, director of the Community-Based Division of the Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP).
ORHP received 287 applications for the grants. Applicants were selected based on how well the applicants demonstrated the need in their community; what plan the applicants had constructed to meet the need; how the applicants planned to evaluate their program; community impact; the capability of the applicants to carry out their projects and goals; and how the proposed budget would support the goals and activities of the project.
Aimee Walls, RN, director of care management at Mt. Desert Island Hospital on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, believes MDIH became was selected to receive a grant because the hospital has a demonstrated track record of being able to handle the responsibilities that go along with being a grant recipient.
“I believe (we got the grant) because of our patient-centered medical home status and that we have a community care team in place and that we are already working on sustainability and working our folks with chronic disease out there in the community,” Walls said. “We already have our finger on the pulse so that we know that we do need to make an impact on such things as readmissions, on chronic disease, on risk factors.”
MDIH, a 25-bed critical access hospital with an island-wide network of eight community health centers, will use its grant to expand its diabetes education program to its year-round population of fewer than 10,000, said Walls.
“The reason why we chose diabetes is because we felt that there’s a number of folks out there that are not actively engaged (with) their primary care physicians so we wanted to help that,” she said. “It’s much easier or makes sense to focus on one thing that you do really well. We have a wonderful diabetes education program already in the hospital and in the clinics.”
With the grant, MDIH will expand its diabetes education program by training peer coaches to work with members of the community and offering programs such as cooking and exercise classes to encourage healthy lifestyles. “We hope to really think out of the box with this grant,” Walls said.
That sort of creative thinking is what the federal government is looking for to lead the way, said Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN, administrator of HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), in a statement about the grants.
“Rural areas face unique issues and challenges," she said. "But that makes them ideal for developing innovative solutions and creating models that can be replicated elsewhere. As rural communities forge these systemic improvements, they set an example for the delivery of high quality healthcare regardless of where one lives across the United States."
The money for the grants is being distributed through HRSA and will be dispersed in segments up to $150,000 a year for the three years of the grant, Patel said. While grantees are required to report clinical and process measures data annually for the duration of the grant, they are not expected to meet designated benchmarks in order to maintain the grant.