Doctors’ Memorial Hospital CEO Lauren Faison-Clark. (Photo by Liam Fineout)
Lauren Faison-Clark is CEO of a hospital in rural Perry who has anxiously been waiting for the state to start accepting grant applications for $209 million in “Rural Health Transformation” money.
Her wait is over.
The DeSantis administration announced this week that it had posted grant applications for rural health infrastructure grants awarded to the state by the federal government late last year as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by Congress.
Trump administration awards Florida $209M for rural health improvements
Tuesday’s announcement covers the first round of grant opportunities, focusing on infrastructure necessary to monitor success and track expenditures and deliverables. Specifically, the funds can be spent for:
- Grant management technologies.
- Independent evaluation services to monitor compliance, data governance, and the efficacy of the initiative.
- Technical assistance services for grant sub-awardees.
- Education and outreach services to assist Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in selecting an integrated health plan.
In its press release, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) said it will “soon” post a second round of grants for initiatives intended to improve access to health care for rural Florida.
The move came days before the Joint Legislative Budget Commission is expected to grant the agency authority to spend the federal money awarded late last year.
AHCA must announce both rounds of grant awards by Sept. 30 and the funds must be spent by Sept. 30, 2027.
Year Two funding will equal whatever facilities spent by Sept. 30, 2027. That means, for instance, that if Florida spends only $190 million by that time, Year Two grant funding will be $190 million and not the $209 million the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has approved.
Seven-hospital consortium
Doctors’ Memorial Hospital is the small facility in Perry that Faison-Clark heads. The hospital faces challenges that rural providers encounter: aging infrastructure, workforce recruitment and retention, and financial struggles stemming from a high mix of underinsured and uninsured patients.
In addition, the 48-bed hospital has been hit by three hurricanes over two years.
The Perry facility is working with six other rural hospitals across northwest Florida to bring more services to their facilities through telehealth, she said.
Representatives of the hospitals have met regularly to discuss how they can tap into the federal rural transformation funds to support the telehealth initiative.
“There’s a million examples” of how telehealth could improve rural health care and make it work better for the patient, she said.
For instance, it’s not uncommon for a rural hospital to transfer patients to larger facilities out of town because the rural hospital lacks the required specialists needed to render the care.
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Transferring patients drives up the costs of the hospital bill and takes away available hospital beds at the transfer facility that could have been used for sicker patients. That, Faison-Clark said, “clogs up the system.”
Telehealth, she said, can help bring specialists to the hospitals and negate some of those transfers.
“There’s no way I’ll ever be able to afford to have a neurologist out here sitting around waiting for the right patient to come in, right? That’s not an efficient use of money, either. But if I have seven rural hospitals, maybe we have a neurologist that supports all of us, and they’re sitting at a computer looking at images, looking at patients talking to doctors,” she said.
“They’re an on call, on-demand resource. They can be where they need. Beam in, if you will, where they need to be, when they need to be there. That’s a much more efficient use of the resource, and it gives that patient quicker determination of care, and can be life saving.”
In addition to working with the coalition, she said, Doctors’ Memorial Hospital will pursue grant money individually.
“So, we’re going to go after as much as we can, you know, assuming that through the RFA [request for application] process we can, you know, find things that qualify to apply for the patients,” she said.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashes Medicaid funding by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade to help preserve the tax cuts President Donald Trump passed during his first term.
To offset concerns and to help the legislation cross the finish line, Congress agreed to create the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. The program provides states access for five years to $10 billion in grant funding. The grants can be used to support expanded access to care, recruit and retain providers, and for technological innovation, including remote care and emerging delivery models. Dollars cannot be used to reimburse the costs of the care provided, though.
Regional spending
AHCA Secretary Shevaun Harris initially announced on National Rural Health Day, Nov. 20, that the state expected approval from the federal government at the end of December and that the agency would post rural health grant applications in January or February.
With more than 1 million people living in rural areas in Florida, the $209M grant breaks down to a $199 per resident, a KFF analysis shows.
AHCA divided the state into four regions: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast and has agreed to spend $43.9 million, $85.6 million, $50.2 million, and $15 million, respectively.