Health Secretary Predicts Another $199M in RHTP Funds

A state health official expects allocations of federal funds for rural health to remain flat for next year.  

West Virginia received $199 million in the first year of the five-year Rural Health Transformation Program to implement improvements to healthcare statewide and shore up rural care specifically. The funding is intended to offset nearly a billion dollars in cuts to Medicare in the One Big Beautiful Act. That lost revenue is expected to hit small, rural hospitals the hardest. 

Dr. Arvin Singh, secretary of the West Virginia Department of Health, said Tuesday he expects distribution among states to remain the same for the second year of the program when the disbursements are announced in November.  

“I personally believe that year two will probably be – because there’s not a lot of data out to judge implementation – it’s my opinion, my opinion alone, that year two would probably be flat across the board,” Singh said. “I would think it would be year three when you start to get implementation data that you’re going to really start to see some of those fluctuations, but year two could be different. I haven’t heard directly of this – but there could be some states who are way out of line that may need an adjustment quicker than that. But that’s my initial thought, is, it would largely be flat.” 

But he told the Joint Standing Committee on Finance Tuesday that the program’s federal administrators have been impressed with West Virginia’s distribution of the funds.  

“CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is really looking for what we’re doing, which is really getting to the vendor level, engaging, tracking, and they’ve been appreciating that. They’ve been talking about the state of West Virginia and the work we’ve been doing,” Singh said.   

So far rural health funds have been announced for organizations like Vandalia Health to help employees access care and West Virginia University to recruit healthcare workers to the state.