White House announces funding to aid rural hospitals in fighting pandemic

The Biden administration on Friday announced the allocation of billions of dollars in funding intended to aid hospitals and combat the COVID-19 pandemic in rural communities.

The administration announced $500 million in funding through the Department of Agriculture would be used to create the Emergency Rural Health Care Grant Program, which will allocate most of that money to assist rural hospitals and boost COVID-19 testing and vaccination efforts.

The program will also provide more than $100 million in grants to make rural health care providers more viable in the long term, the White House said.

Separately, the Department of Health and Human Services is allocating $8.5 billion from the American Rescue Plan signed into law earlier this year to pay health care providers in rural communities who provide Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Plan services as compensation for lost revenue amid the pandemic.

“These funds will help ensure that providers can effectively respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and will place them on stable financial footing to continue serving their communities into the future,” the White House said in a release outlining the additional measures.

Other steps the White House touted included expanding telehealth access for Americans in rural communities, bolstering Veterans Affairs training programs in rural areas for health care providers and allocating $52 million to train health care workers for professions that have staffing needs due to the pandemic.

Rural communities have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, and experts have cautioned that proximity and access to hospitals, testing and vaccination sites have added to those challenges. The administration previously announced $100 million in funding would be directed toward rural health clinics to do more vaccine outreach.