Note: one week to the October 30 obligation deadline, and CMS has now put Year 2 award announcements on the same day. If you are planning around both calendars, RHTP Verified Intelligence is built for exactly this week.
In this issue:
Utah posts CMS’s notice moving Year 2 award announcements to October 30, and says its Year 1 awardee list is coming
Massachusetts extends its Rural Partners RFA to November 9
Alaska finalizes its Fall 2026 evaluation frameworks with seven more changes from public comment, five days before applications close
North Dakota moves its Suicide Intervention – Healthcare Systems Initiative to Awarded, 5 applicants
Maryland names 34 organizations behind its $16.4 million in RHTP workforce awards, and the list adds up to $13,965,196
Texas’s $8 million in Rural Texas Strong grants is the 28 rows added to its October 15 award list
Oklahoma opens the Community Paramedicine Consulting Services RFP, EV00000993, due November 18
Utah posts CMS’s notice moving Year 2 award announcements to October 30, and says its Year 1 awardee list is coming
Utah replaced the FAQ block on its RHTP homepage with this, under the heading “Year 1 RHTP Obligations and Update Regarding Year 2 Awards”:
At this time, CMS is concentrating our efforts on Year 1 obligations to ensure all states meet the obligation deadline and do not lose Year 1 funds. As we focus on this critical deadline, CMS will need to move the award announcements for Year 2 awards to October 30, 2026.
So the Year 2 announcements now land on the Year 1 obligation deadline itself. As far as I can tell, Utah is the only state that has posted CMS’s language publicly.
Directly below it:
The Utah Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is preparing to formally announce the grant awardees for the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), supported by the $195,743,566 first-year award from CMS.
The categories named are RISE 2.3 and 2.4, SHIFT 3.3, PATH 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.5, LIFT 5.1 and FAST 4.1. There’s an “RHTP Awardees” heading on the page, but no list under it yet.
Massachusetts extends its Rural Partners RFA to November 9
The new deadline is Monday, November 9 at 5:00 p.m. ET, two weeks past the original October 26. EOHHS’s email, sent October 22:
Due to the high volume of questions received and in order to allow applicants sufficient time to review the answers that will be published, the deadline for the Massachusetts Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) Rural Partner Request for Applications (RFA) has been extended to Monday, November 9, 2026 at 5:00 PM ET.
Answers to the questions will go up on the COMMBUYS page (BD-27-1039-EHS01-EHS01-134186), and EOHHS will send a reminder when they do. We walked the RFA’s 27 activities across six initiatives October 7. The Q&A is the next document worth reading.
Alaska finalizes its Fall 2026 evaluation frameworks with seven more changes from public comment, five days before applications close
We covered the nine draft changes October 1: 3.0 weighted overall with 2.5 per criterion, and a new 10% Cost-Effectiveness and Budget Justification criterion. Those all survived. The final Summary of Changes (last updated 10/15/2026) adds seven more, made in response to comments:
Limited impermissible costs, or costs above administrative limits, may be fixed through budget clarification before final award
Applicants may use data for the population served, not just local data, to show need
Rural impact can be shown through improvements to care delivery or to the health and outcomes of rural Alaskans
“The absence of formal partnerships is not, by itself, a weakness”
Applicants are prompted to explain costs driven by the operating environment: travel, freight, recruitment, housing
The top implementation score now describes outcomes as “ambitious and achievable”
Portfolio review sets no quotas or caps by organization or provider type, and geographic refinements will be published in advance
Final frameworks: Implementation Pathway, Planning Pathway, Portfolio Analysis Review.
The fall cycle still closes Wednesday, October 28 at 11:59 p.m. DOH’s October 22 release restates the Year 1 close we reported October 10 (254 projects, just under $249 million) and adds one promise: a public dashboard by the end of the calendar year.
