The State Office of Rural Health (SORH) provides services, programs and grants for rural health in the amount of approximately $3.5 million per year. Major funding sources include the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and the general revenue of the State of Texas.  The SORH serves as a coordination, facilitation and grant issuing agency for federal and state programs related to healthcare in rural areas.

Major rural health related programs include the following:

The Outstanding Rural Scholar Recognition Program (ORSRP) is designed to assist rural communities in “growing their own” health care professionals by matching community funds with state funds to support a student of the community’s choice in a health professional education program. Fifty percent of the student’s educational expenses are contributed by the sponsoring rural community and the remainder is provided by the SORH. For each year the student receives funds through the program, the student provides a year of health care in the sponsoring rural community.

The Rural Communities Healthcare Investment Program (RCHIP) is designed to attract and retain healthcare professionals in rural communities by providing incentives such as stipends or loan repayment assistance to non-physician healthcare professionals who agree to practice in rural medically underserved areas.  The funds for RCHIP are made available from the state Tobacco settlement.

The Rural Health Facility Capital Improvement Loan Fund Program (CILF) provides grants or loans to hospitals in rural counties to make capital improvements to existing health facilities, construct new health facilities, or purchase capital equipment. Hospitals eligible to apply for these funds are public and nonprofit facilities. The funds for this program are made available through a $50,000,000 endowment from the Tobacco settlement.  Each year, approximately $2,000,000 is awarded to rural hospitals.
 
The Small Rural Hospital Improvement Program (SHIP) Grant provides funding to small rural hospitals to help them do any or all of the following: costs related to implementation of prospective payment systems (PPS) - (such as updating chargemasters or providing training in billing and coding); and/or pay for the costs related to delivery system changes as outlined federal legislation, such as value-based purchasing (VBP), accountable care organizations (ACO) and payment bundling. 

The Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program encourages the development of a statewide rural health plan; conversion of small rural hospitals to Critical Access Hospital (CAH) status; development of rural health networks associated with the CAH facilities; the integration and strengthening of rural emergency medical systems; and the improving of the quality of healthcare services for rural populations.  Programs and activities under this program are designed specifically for hospitals designated as CAHs or those investigating converting to a CAH. The major programs include the following:

     Rural Health Feasibility/Planning Grants are designed to support two major types of rural health planning needs: strategic planning activities, assessments and system development needs for Texas Critical Access Hospitals (CAH); and financial feasibility studies for eligible rural Texas hospitals to determine the financial and operational impact and benefit of CAH status and conversion.

     Rural EMS/Trauma Enhancement Grants
The purpose of the two (2) part Rural EMS/Trauma Enhancement Program is to develop and improve the rural EMS response, delivery and service capacity and expand Texas’ trauma system by increasing the number of CAHs that are designated as Level IV Trauma Centers.

     CAH Board of Trustee Continuing Education Reimbursement Program is designed to assist trustees in the governance of the CAH by supporting continuing Board education and training on health system governance, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, CAH reimbursement as well as rules, regulations and developments specific to the CAH program.

     Rural Performance and Quality Improvement Network Program
SORH contracts with Texas A&M Health Science Center’s Rural and Community Health Institute (RCHI) to coordinate, manage and expand the current Quality and Performance Improvement program for Critical Access and small rural hospitals in Texas.  RCHI provides rural hospitals with a cost effective and efficient method of using data to manage and evaluate the quality of rural health care.

     Accredited Healthcare Continuing Education Program
SORH contracts with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) Health.edu to provide high quality professional healthcare continuing education and training to all Texas CAHs with over 200 hours of new CE and training programs delivered annually.  Health.edu is a multi-media healthcare continuing education service supported by a secure, comprehensive web-based learning management system. It allows individuals to take healthcare continuing education courses online at their convenience to help satisfy their specific license requirements.  

     Quality Improvement Initiative
SORH, in conjunction with Texas A&M University’s Rural and Community Health Institute, has developed a quality improvement program for Critical Access Hospitals in Texas. Using the web-based tool called Healthcare Data Integration (HDI) powered by QuadraMed.  The HDI program offers: collection, error correction, and warehousing of inpatient and outpatient data; submission of inpatient and outpatient data to the Texas Department of State Health Services—THCIC; submission of core measures to Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) and The Joint Commission; Core Measures abstracting tool with specification updates and reporting capabilities; and benchmarking at an individual, state and national level.

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