The Wyoming Department of Health is hearing similar comments about the state of rural health care from communities around the state as it works to quickly craft an application for federal grant funding.
Officials with the department visited Buffalo on Sept. 18 as part of its attempt to gauge needs and input on rural health care before applying for a portion of $50 billion that will be allocated to states via the Rural Health Transformation Program established in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Trump administration’s budget package passed this summer.
Franz Fuchs, deputy director of the Wyoming Health Department, told nearly 20 attendees at Bomber Mountain Civic Center on Thursday night that Wyoming is eligible to receive $500 million to $800 million in federal dollars over the next five years.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on its website explains the program goals, which are to improve rural communities’ access to health care, bolster workforce development, lower care costs, foster technological innovation and improve preventive health care.
Fuchs said in an interview that the identified priorities for health care and concerns brought up in the Buffalo meeting – staffing shortages driven by housing costs and availability in rural communities, maternal health care deserts and a lack of specialists in proximity and barriers to behavioral health care – are common issues voiced in other communities around the state.
The department has a tight turnaround in completing its application, he said.
The application, released this week, is due in early November, and the department is expected to wrap up its in-person town halls on Oct. 2.
Award decisions are expected to be issued by the end of the year.
“We’re trying to identify the problems we want to solve,” Fuchs said. “We don’t know what the problems are in Cheyenne, so we need to go out and find out what those are. We’re trying to get as much turnout as possible, and I think a diverse group of stakeholders is important.”
Local health care leaders were the majority of participants in Buffalo’s meeting.
The health department facilitated conversation about various aspects of improving health care delivery – cost, access and quality – and what should be prioritized.
Participants also discussed what types of care it is important to have in a rural community, as well as various challenges, needs and things that are going well in community health care.
Fuchs said that the state’s application will be geared toward statewide solutions rather than pointed programs at individual hospitals or health care facilities around the state.
“We’re not even thinking about how we divide that money right now, we’re just trying to make the best application we can,” he said. “We’re asking people for ideas not so we can say, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you this amount of money,’ but we’re asking, is this a good idea, can we generalize it (and) can we apply this for the entire state – let’s really make this a big part of our application.”
The department is also hosting virtual town hall meetings and plans to post a survey online to collect input and refine Wyoming’s priorities for the application.
For more information, see rural-health-transformation-program/.
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