Julie O’Donoghue | Louisiana Illuminator
Louisiana is likely to prioritize digitizing medical records and tuition forgiveness for rural health care practitioners in its application for a piece of the new $50 billion federal rural health care fund.
The Trump administration formally kicked off the application process Monday for its Rural Health Transformation Program. Every state with an accepted proposal will receive at least $100 million per year from federal fiscal year 2026 through 2030.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, currently Mehmet Oz, will have broad discretion to distribute more money — $25 billion over the program’s five-year run — to individual states of their choice. States must submit their plans for Oz’s review by Nov. 5 and are expected to hear about the amount of their awards by Dec. 31.
Louisiana Department of Health Secretary Bruce Greenstein said he hopes to receive at least $200 million annually, for a total of $1 billion over five years. The state has worked on its application for weeks through meetings of a 60-member rural health task force set up to seek input about where the money should go.
Public outreach meetings, which the health department is calling “idea raisers,” are also planned for the Monroe and Alexandria areas, Greenstein said in an interview Friday. State officials are also soliciting feedback about uses for the funding through an online form available on its new rural health transformation program website.
At least some of the money will likely be used to standardize and upgrade medical record systems at Louisiana’s rural hospitals, which also provide primary care services in less populated areas.
A digital records system that works across facilities would make operations more efficient, and improve the use of lab tests and x-rays, Greenstein said. It would allow for more analysis of health care services and conditions across rural communities, he added.
The health department also wants to add rural rotations for medical students and create more financial incentives for health care professionals, such as nurses, doctors and dental hygienists, to practice in rural areas, according to Greenstein.
This includes putting more money into efforts to allow health care practitioners to avoid or pay down student loan debt if they take jobs in rural areas.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
SUPPORT
One option might be expanding Louisiana’s Health Care Employment Reinvestment Opportunity (HERO) program, which uses state and private funding for scholarships and student loan forgiveness for health care workers who work in underserved communities, Greenstein said.
Other state efforts to help new graduates in medical fields pay back their loans if they work in rural areas would also likely get more support, Greenstein said.
Jeff Reynolds, executive director of the Rural Hospital Association of Louisiana, said his organization’s priorities partially align with what Greenstein has mentioned. Digitizing records as well as recruiting rural health care practitioners are concerns.
Rural hospitals would also like to see investments in telehealth, mobile health care clinics and transportation for rural patients to bring them to appointments, Reynolds said.
Congress inserted the $50 billion rural health care fund into Trump’s “big beautiful bill” as a concession to U.S. senators who were troubled by dramatic Medicaid cuts also in the legislation.
Rural health care providers rely heavily on Medicaid, which provides health insurance to people who are poor or disabled.
While the $50 billion will offset incoming Medicaid cuts, experts have said it might not be enough to make up for the financial losses rural hospitals expect to see when the program is downsized.
The criteria for drawing down the $50 billion fund is also vague and leaves Oz a lot of latitude over who will get the extra funding.
That could work to Louisiana’s advantage because the state is run by a Republican governor, Jeff Landry, who is aligned with Trump. Greenstein also worked for Trump at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the president’s previous term.
About a third of Louisiana’s population lives in rural areas and, compared with their urban peers, suffer with more health maladies. They have higher rates of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, plus they are more likely to smoke cigarettes, according to the state health department.