HealthIT Answers January 11, 2026
Why interoperability, community information exchange, and behavioral health sit at the center of CMS’s $50 billion bet
The recent establishment of the Office of Rural Health Transformation by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services marked a quiet but consequential shift in federal rural health policy. Combined with the release of state award amounts and project abstracts under the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program, the message is clear: rural health transformation is no longer framed as a collection of pilots. It is being treated as an infrastructure challenge.
That framing matters.
A review of the state-submitted RHT abstracts shows that while workforce, telehealth, and hospital sustainability remain prominent, the most consistent throughline across states is the need to...
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