In this issue:
Michigan puts a number on the pipeline in its July 2026 RHTP newsletter: seven GFOs in Budget Period 1, five of them workforce
New Mexico answers six questions on RFA 27-630-8000-0037 Ob/Gyn Services and opens the door to telehealth-only bids
Missouri extends IFB #DSS26015-01 ToRCH Care Smart Growth and Service Line Modification (Horizon 2) to 2 p.m. September 1
Colorado Raises Its Capital Cap to 20% and Warns Grantees About Unspent Money
Montana issues RHTP Emergency Medical Dispatch, DPHHS-RFP-2027-0692AB, a single statewide contract closing September 23
Minnesota opens Analysis of the Rural Maternity Care System and Rural Telehealth Services
Michigan puts a number on the pipeline in its July 2026 RHTP newsletter: seven GFOs in Budget Period 1, five of them workforce
Seven Grant Funding Opportunities are coming in Budget Period 1 — five of them for the Workforce for Wellness initiative, and one each for the Chronic Disease Collaborative Care Fund and the Improving Care and Access through Transportation Grant Program. We covered the $34.2M workforce round on July 10 and the $12M transportation program on July 22; what we did not have until now is the denominator.
The July newsletter also sets the next date. From MDHHS:
Please also note that we expect to receive notification from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding Budget Period 2 awards in October. Following that announcement, we will release information about the timeline for additional GFOs designed to complement and expand upon the investments made during Budget Period 1.
Eligibility runs wide — 501(c)(3) nonprofits, private and public entities, local health departments, federally recognized Michigan tribes, and universities — with one carve-out: federally funded Indian Health Clinics may participate but are not eligible to be awardees.
GFOs do not post to the RHTP page. They post to EGrAMS: go to egrams-mi.com/mdhhs, select Search Grants, check Open and Competitive, click Find.
New Mexico answers six questions on RFA 27-630-8000-0037 Ob/Gyn Services and opens the door to telehealth-only bids
$1,000,000 for Ob/Gyn services in Cibola, McKinley, San Juan, Valencia, and Catron counties, released August 6, applications due 11:59 p.m. MST September 10. Amendment 1 posted August 25 with six questions, and four of the six answers widen the field rather than narrow it:
Telehealth counts. “Yes, telehealth Ob/Gyn services to patients located in McKinley County would qualify” — the patient must be in an eligible county, the clinician does not.
No labor and delivery required. An outpatient model of gynecological exams, prenatal and postpartum care, screenings, family planning, and menopause management qualifies.
You do not need an existing program. “Yes, an organization could apply to establish new Ob/Gyn services in the allowable counties.”
Non-clinical staff may prepare and submit through the Euna portal, with an authorized representative signing Appendix C.
Eligible provider types are OB/GYN (MD or DO), CNM, CNP in women’s health or family practice, and PA. Contact is Jordan Engler, Contracts and Procurement Manager, Jordan.Engler@hca.nm.gov.
One caveat, stated plainly: neither the RFA nor HCA’s August 12 release names RHTP as the funding source, and the funding period runs October 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027 — New Mexico’s fiscal year end, not an RHTP budget period. It sits on the same HCA page as the Rural Health Innovation Fund and the CRHSI solicitation. Treat the funding line as unconfirmed.
Missouri extends IFB #DSS26015-01 ToRCH Care Smart Growth and Service Line Modification (Horizon 2) to 2 p.m. September 1
We flagged the missing close date on July 30 and again on August 19; it was never printed on the DSS rural health page. Amendment #01, issued August 18, replaces the original IFB in full and moves the bid deadline from August 28 to 2 p.m. Tuesday, September 1. The program also picked up a house name in the amendment: Horizon 2.
Terms are unchanged — nearly $40 million across Program Years 1 and 2, awards up to $5 million each, final amount pending CMS approval, and projects must align with ToRCH Care priorities and one of maternal health, behavioral health, or diagnostics and outpatient care. Against Missouri’s roughly $216 million a year, Horizon 2 is under 10% of what the state has to move across those two years.
The more useful document is the one posted next to the IFB. The attendance record from the August 11 pre-proposal teleconference runs 241 entries — six DSS staff and 235 outside them. Mercy, BJC HealthCare, Freeman Health and Mosaic Life Care are on it, so are the Missouri Hospital Association and the Missouri Primary Care Association, and so is McKinsey. Whatever else nearly $40 million in Missouri is, it is not a thin field.
Utah’s SHIFT 3.4 closes the same day. Nobody coordinated September; everyone is aiming at the same October end of Year 1.
Colorado Raises Its Capital Cap to 20% and Warns Grantees About Unspent Money
Colorado HCPF Deputy Medicaid Director Cristen Bates used an August 27 letter to RHTP partners to correct the state’s grant guidance: 20%, not 15%, of total RHTP funding may go to Capital Expenditures and Infrastructure — CMS Category J, covering minor building alterations, renovations, and equipment upgrades. Applicants who built budgets against 15% just gained five points of capital headroom, after the fact.
The rest of the letter previews contracting. HCPF expects partial awards, because its dynamic application process let a single submission cover multiple of the eight grant programs. It also expects to ask some applicants whether they would accept an award under a different program than the one they applied to — a telehealth project can read as technology innovation, workforce, or sustainable care, and HCPF anticipates oversubscription in some programs and undersubscription in others. Post-award, grantees get CMS’s 10% budget-line flexibility without an amendment, a budget amendment process for anything larger, and annual budget and narrative resubmissions.
The sharp edge is at the end. CMS rescores states each year, that score sets up to 25% of the next year’s budget, and CMS officials have said verbally that unspent state funds return to the federal government. HCPF is awaiting written guidance and is already scoping ways to recycle unspent money in-state — supplemental awards to existing grantees, funding for applicants that weren’t awarded, quick-execute intergovernmental contracts.
Awards land by the end of September.
Also from Colorado re: national best practices query
The Department is soliciting information from hospitals as it relates to a legislative request for information from the Joint Budget Committee. Specifically, the Department is looking for suggestions from Colorado teaching hospitals, academic medical centers, and rural and critical access hospitals who receive medical education funding on any national best practices that could be successful in Colorado.
If you have any information to share, please email HCPF Hospital Regulatory at HCPF_Hospitalregulatory@state.co.us.
Montana issues RHTP Emergency Medical Dispatch, DPHHS-RFP-2027-0692AB, a single statewide contract closing September 23
DPHHS announced it this morning; the RFP opened August 25 on eMACS. It sits under the Innovative Care Models initiative.
Thirty-five of Montana’s 58 Public Safety Answering Points run on a state-sponsored emergency medical dispatch platform that the state says will soon be obsolete. From the notice:
While the state houses 58 total PSAPs, the final vendor scope will depend on how many local centers elect to participate in the upgraded system.
That is the number to price against. The floor is 35, the ceiling is 58, and nobody knows where it lands until after award. The procurement is intended to result in a single contract for software, implementation, integration, training, support, maintenance, and related services.
Dates, all through bids.mt.gov: open August 25, questions close 2 p.m. MDT September 9, bids close 2 p.m. MDT September 23. Program contact is HHSRuralHealthTransformation@mt.gov.
The notice carries the CMS funding statement in full — $233,509,358.76, 100 percent CMS/HHS — so this one is unambiguously RHTP. And on August 18 we wrote up the August 6 Stakeholder Advisory Committee deck, which said three procurements were still to post in August. This is one of them.
