Note: two states have now installed the same private EMS coordination platform as public infrastructure, and neither one ran a solicitation you could find. If you want the vendor layer of this program as it forms rather than after the contracts are signed, peep RHTP Verified Intelligence.
In this issue:
California posts the recording of its Workforce Development Recruitment and Retention webinar
Alaska softens its Year 2 timing and adds three more regional meeting dates
North Carolina rebuilds its RHTP homepage around six initiatives and a 40-member advisory committee
North Dakota’s Childcare for the Rural Health Workforce closes with 9 applicants against 38 planned awards
New York to open Rural Community Health Integration budget period 2 in November, and new applicants are welcome
Utah opens SHIFT 3.4 New Models of Care five days early, $10 million, closing September 1
Oklahoma names Pulsara its statewide EMS centralization platform, with no solicitation anywhere
Georgia awards $26 million for surgical robots to 13 rural hospitals and names the five that lost
California posts Workforce Development Recruitment and Retention webinar recording
For vendors and workforce-development organizations, one of the most consequential details in the webinar was HCAI’s unusually broad view of who can organize and lead a collaborative application.
A vendor or nonprofit does not necessarily have to be a rural healthcare provider—or even be physically located in a rural community—to play the lead coordinating role. When asked specifically whether a San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) workforce organization could lead an application for a consortium of Central Valley healthcare providers, Hovik Khosrovian said yes, provided that the actual participating facilities and professionals receiving the recruitment and retention funding meet the rural requirements.
He characterized such an organization as essentially an administrative partner overseeing funding for multiple facilities. That is particularly notable because HCAI's published program materials identify regional collaborations alongside facilities and organizations as eligible applicants, rather than treating collaboration merely as an optional feature of a provider's proposal.
Alaska softens its Year 2 timing and adds three more regional meeting dates
DOH collapsed “What to expect next” and “Looking ahead” into a single “What’s next” section yesterday, and rewrote the Year 2 sentence. It used to read that DOH anticipates opening a new LOI submission and/or application period for Year 2 “in early fall 2026.” It now reads “as early as fall 2026,” with performance periods potentially starting January 2027.
Three regional meetings were added to the calendar:
Valdez — September 3, 2026
Utqiagvik / North Slope — October 27, 2026
Juneau — November 12, 2026
North Carolina posts about advisory committee
The North Carolina Rural Health Transformation Program Advisory Committee includes more than 40 members representing community organizations, health care providers, elected officials and other partners that will help guide our work in improving access to care in rural North Carolina.
North Carolina has the second-largest rural population in the U.S., with more than 3 million residents living in rural areas. North Carolina’s Rural Health Transformation Program is a statewide initiative, supported by over $213 million in federal funding in year 1 from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, designed to address longstanding challenges in rural health care access and delivery.
The NCRHTP Advisory Committee will bring community, provider and regional perspectives together to guide how the program is designed and implemented for our rural communities. As the Rural Health Transformation Program grows and evolves, NCDHHS may add additional members to this Committee to ensure a variety of perspectives are included.
Chaired by Secretary Dev Sangvai with Deputy Secretary Debra Farrington as co-chair, first meeting August 5. Seats went to the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, the NC Rural Center, East Carolina University, the NC Community College System, Cherokee Indian Hospital Authority, Lumbee Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation, Disability Rights NC, and the state departments of Insurance, Commerce, Public Instruction, and Military and Veterans Affairs. This sits on top of the five ROOTS Hubs we covered in June.
North Dakota‘s Childcare for the Rural Health Workforce closes with 9 applicants against 38 planned awards
A total of $3,000,000 in total federal funds is available for this Childcare for the Rural Health Workforce funding opportunity. The awards provided will be dependent on the applications received; 38 awards for approximately $78,000 are expected to be funded.
Nine applications for thirty-eight planned awards. Even if North Dakota funds every applicant at the full estimate, it moves about $702,000 of a $3 million pot and leaves 77 percent of the money unspent. That is the most undersubscribed RHTP opportunity we have found anywhere — it takes the title from Rural Ambulance Modernization at 86 against roughly 110 planned awards, which we ran Tuesday. Community gardens at $160,000 a head drew 45 applicants. Mobile mammography drew 2. Childcare drew 9.
New York to open Rural Community Health Integration budget period 2 in November, and new applicants are welcome
New York held a webinar yesterday and I attended most of it, The state hasn’t posted the deck or video yet, but I wanted to call out some key thing I heard.
Year one in New York is nearly spoken for — every dollar has to be obligated by October 30, meaning an executed contract, a purchase order in process, or staff hired, and the state expects roughly 70 grant and vendor contracts across all four initiatives before that date. RCHI budget period 1 notifications go out by the end of August. Contracts then run to June 30, 2027, with everything spent by September 30, 2027.
Budget period 2 opens in November. Asked whether it would be limited to budget period 1 awardees, the answer was direct: “new applicants will be definitely allowed.” They came back to it twice more unprompted — “if you’re not awarded, for whatever reason, we do encourage you to come back in in year two,” and, for the people who sat this round out, “we know there are other people that chose not to apply… gonna be some opportunities there, too.”
Also: three of New York’s four initiatives have not issued funding guidance at all yet. Primary care, Rural Roots workforce, and technology and cybersecurity are all slated for fall 2026, each administered through a third-party administrator. The split runs roughly: RCHI a little over $76 million, cybersecurity $75 to 80 million, primary care $30 million, workforce about $15 million.
There will be no RFPs, and the state said plainly it does not plan to publish a vendor list. A cybersecurity webinar runs August 17; year one covers hospitals, with long-term care and other provider types phased in across budget periods two through five.
More thorough coverage once the slides and video are published.
