The National Health Service Corps (NHSC) has opened applications for three of its loan repayment programs: the NHSC Loan Repayment Program, the NHSC Substance Use Disorder Workforce Loan Repayment Program and the NHSC Rural Community Loan Repayment Program. NHSC encourages all eligible clinicians passionate about helping patients in underserved communities to apply. All programs use one application, but applicants can only apply to one program. The applications will remain open until April 23. NHSC will host several Q & A sessions to review program requirements and answer application questions.

Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and John Hoeven (R-ND) recently introduced legislation to extend the Frontier Community Health Integration Program (FCHIP), which expired last summer. Under this program, ten Critical Access Hospitals across Montana, Nevada, and North Dakota would test new health care delivery and reimbursement models. Specifically, FCHIP allows additional Skilled Nursing Facility or Nursing Facility beds, supports telehealth expansion, and reimburses ambulance service expenses. The announcement comes amid an accelerating hospital closure crisis where 47% of rural hospitals are vulnerable. You can follow this bill via the National Rural Health Association Legislative Tracker.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued Frequently Asked Questions to Ensure Individuals, Issuers and States have Clear Information on Coverage Benefits for COVID-19.  This action is part of the broader, ongoing effort by the White House Coronavirus Task Force to ensure that all Americans – particularly those at high-risk of complications from the COVID-19 virus – have access to the health benefits that can help keep them healthy while helping to contain the spread of this disease.

The COVID-19 FAQs for EHB can be found here: https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Fact-Sheets-and-FAQs/Downloads/EHB-Benchmark-Coverage-of-COVID-19.pdf

These FAQs, and earlier CMS actions in response to the COVID-19 virus, are part of the ongoing White House Task Force efforts. To keep up with the important work the Task Force is doing in response to COVID-19 click here www.coronavirus.gov. For information specific to CMS, please visit the Current Emergencies Website.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) created this online toolkit for implementing behavioral health crisis care.  The guidelines are intended to help states and communities develop a no-wrong-door integrated crisis system with a regional crisis call center, crisis mobile response teams, and receiving and stabilization facilities.

The Census Bureau is accepting nominations to fill eight vacancies on the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations (NAC). The NAC provides advice to the Director of the Census Bureau on the economic, housing, demographic, socioeconomic, linguistic, technological, methodological, geographic, behavioral, and operational variables affecting the cost, accuracy, and implementation of Census Bureau programs and surveys, including the decennial census. The committee should have representatives with a variety of experience and from varied backgrounds in order to have balanced representation in terms of geography, age, sex, race, ethnicity, technical expertise, community involvement, and knowledge of census programs. Some members may serve as representatives for broad populations groups, including hard-to-count populations and racial and ethnic populations, among others. Nominations are due by August 1, 2020.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is requesting public comments on their draft of the CMS Quality Reporting Document Architecture (QRDA) Category I Implementation Guide and Schematron for Hospital Quality Reporting. The guidelines outline requirements for eligible hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals to report quality measures for the 2021 calendar reporting year. Comments are due by April 1, 2020.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has launched a three-year initiative to build a “hub-and-spoke” model geriatric emergency department which will utilize telemedicine to extend services to rural areas. The goal of the initiative is to keep geriatric patients near their rural homes and keep complicated cases at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

The Technical Assistance and Services Center (TASC), a program of the National Rural Health Resource Center (The Center), is pleased to share the Rural Hospital Guide to Improving Care Management.

The Rural Hospital Guide to Improving Care Management is a result of the 2019 Rural Care Coordination and Population Health Management Summit, funded by FORHP. The guide provides rural hospital executive and management teams with generally accepted best practice concepts related to care management. Rural hospitals can use the guide to determine how to most effectively staff care management and identify opportunities to improve clinical and financial outcomes.

State rural health partners may also benefit from this guide, as it assists them in asking the right questions when meeting with hospital leadership. The guide also offers opportunities to improve performance within the hospital setting through the transition from traditional fee-for-service reimbursement to a value-based, population-health-focused reimbursement environment.

The 2019 Rural Care Coordination and Population Health Management Summit Report will assist rural hospitals, clinics, and network leaders in considering key actions they can undertake to incorporate community care coordination planning as a strategy to help position their organization for population health.

Visit the TASC resource library to gain access to the Rural Hospital Guide to Improving Care Management and learn more about the Rural Hospital Care Coordination and Population Health Management Summit Report. You may also view the accompanying video: Population Health for Rural Hospitals: What the experts are saying, featuring Summit panelists.

Access the guide and summit report here.

On March 9, 2020, the U.S. Department of Human Services (HHS) finalized two transformative rules that will give patients unprecedented safe, secure access to their health data. Interoperability has been pursued by multiple administrations and numerous laws, and today, these rules finally deliver on giving patients true access to their healthcare data to make informed healthcare decisions and better manage their care. Putting patients in charge of their health records is a key piece of giving patients more control in healthcare, and patient control is at the center of the Trump administration’s work toward a value-based healthcare system.

The two rules, issued by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), implement interoperability and patient access provisions of the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) and support President Trump’s MyHealthEData initiative. MyHealthEData is designed to empower patients around a common aim – giving every American access to their medical information so they can make better healthcare decisions.

To read the HHS press release, please visit: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/03/09/hhs-finalizes-historic-rules-to-provide-patients-more-control-of-their-health-data.html

For more information on the ONC final rule, please visit: https://protect2.fireeye.com/url?k=f38dbe61-afd9974a-f38d8f5e-0cc47a6d17cc-bffa0ac2011a7cad&u=https://healthit.gov/curesrule

For more information on the CMS final rule, please visit: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/interoperability-and-patient-access-fact-sheet

To view the CMS final rule, please visit: https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Interoperability/index

To view the ONC final rule, please visit: https://protect2.fireeye.com/url?k=f9e21b2d-a5b63206-f9e22a12-0cc47a6d17cc-f19fbf5cef959860&u=https://healthit.gov/curesrule

U.S. Today, March 6, 2020

FAIRFIELD, Washington — Drive 20 minutes south of Spokane and pine trees give way to rolling hills, which in fall are golden with remnants of the wheat harvest and in winter dusted with snow. This part of eastern Washington state is the beginning of the Palouse region. Its small farm towns once thrived but now struggle to offer essential services such as health care.

For decades in Fairfield, residents received care from a doctor in a community clinic on Main Street. Alongside a post office, community center (which doubles as Town Hall), drug store, bank and library, a stucco building where the health clinic used to be sits vacant.

Longtime Fairfield residents recall giving birth to their children at the clinic and visiting for regular checkups. But in 2019, after Kaiser Permanente acquired the health care group that operated the clinic, it closed and the doctor moved to Spokane, a 30-minute drive north.  The drive is reasonable for some Fairfield residents, but it’s not feasible for others. As the Spokane-based Spokesman-Review reported, the majority of residents at Palouse Country Assisted Living, one of Fairfield’s largest employers, cannot drive.

Nationally, more than one in five people over age 65 live in rural areas, Census data show, and in Washington state, 20 percent of people 65 and older live in rural communities.

Read more.