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Rural Health Care Services Outreach, Network and Quality
Improvement Grants
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FY
2007 Actual |
FY
2008
Enacted |
FY
2009
Estimate |
FY
2009 +/-
FY 2008 |
BA |
$38,885,000 |
$48,031,000 |
--- |
-$48,031,000 |
Authorizing
Legislation -Section 330A of the Public Health Service
Act.
FY
2009 Authorization |
Expired
|
Allocation
Method |
Competitive
Grants |
Program
Description and Accomplishments
The Rural Health Care Services Outreach, Network and
Quality Improvement Grants are a subcomponent of ORHP.
The purpose of the grants is to improve access to
care, coordination of care, integration of services
and to focus on quality improvement. The grants began
as a demonstration program in 1993 and were formally
authorized in 1996. There are multiple grant programs
administered under this authority. All of the grants
support collaborative models to deliver basic health
care services to the 55 million Americans living in
rural areas.
The Rural Health Care Services Outreach grant program,
which began in 1993, focuses on supporting community
efforts to increase access to primary health care
services for rural Americans. The program supports
a wide range of services, including primary medical
and dental care, mental health treatment, health promotion
and health education services, and hospice care. The
program awarded 122 grants in FY 2007.
The Rural Health Network Development grant program,
which began in 1997, helps rural health providers
develop community-based, integrated systems of care.
This program has three separate competitions.
-
The first is the Rural Network Development grants
which support building regional or local partnerships
among local hospitals, physician groups, long-term
care facilities and public health agencies to improve
management of scarce health care resources. The
program awarded 38 grants in FY 2007.
- The
second program under this authority, which began
in 2001, provides network development grants to
the eight States in the Mississippi Delta for network
and rural health infrastructure development. The
program awarded 12 grants in FY 2007.
- The
third program in this authority supports Network
Planning grants, which began in 2004. These grants
provide small start-up funding to groups of rural
health care providers who seek to work together
in a more formal network to increase access to services
and/or the viability of the local rural health care
delivery system. The program awarded 10 grants in
FY 2007.
The Small Health Care Provider Quality Improvement
Grants began in 2006 and their purpose is to help
small health care providers focus on specific interventions
to improve health care quality in specific chronic
disease areas. The program awarded 15 grants in FY
2007. In FY 2006, the Outreach program served 629,120
individuals, just below the target of 675,300.
This program was covered in OMB’s combined PART
assessment of HRSA’s Rural Health Activities
during 2003. The rural health activities received
a rating of Adequate. (See earlier Office of Rural
Health Policy Summary Request.)
Funding includes costs associated with grant reviews,
processing of grants through the Grants Administration
Tracking and Evaluation System (GATES) and HRSA’s
electronic handbook, and follow-up performance reviews.
Funding History
FY
2004 |
$39,601,000 |
FY
2005 |
$39,278,000
|
FY
2006 |
$38,858,000 |
FY
2007 |
$38,885,000
|
FY
2008 |
$48,031,000 |
Budget
Request
There is no FY 2009 Budget request for this program.
The need for this program has decreased as the result
of rural provisions within the Medicare Modernization
Act of 2003 (MMA). The MMA contained several provisions
to support rural health, for example by increasing
Medicare Critical Access Hospital (CAH) payments to
101 percent of costs and broadening eligibility criteria
for CAHs. The number of CAHs receiving enhanced Medicare
payments has grown significantly since the passage
of the MMA. In addition, the HHS administers approximately
225 other health and social services programs that
provide resources to rural areas. There is no target
for the performance measures for FY 2009 as there
is no request for this program.
See Table |