State finalizing agreements for about $39 million in Rural Health Transformation funding, Singh says

The West Virginia Department of Health is finalizing agreements to award approximately $39 million in federal funding from the Rural Health Transformation program, state lawmakers were told Monday. 

The program is on track to obligate its entire $199 million in Rural Health funds by Oct. 30 to meet a federal deadline, state Health Secretary Arvin Singh said. 

Singh gave an update on the program to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance. The state is not releasing names of the agencies getting the funds “until grant agreements and contracts are fully executed,” Singh said.

“A lot of these awardees, we are working and negotiating statements of work, so we don’t want to get ahead of that,” Singh said.  

During legislative interim meetings in May, Singh told lawmakers the state would pay $12 million in consulting fees to the firm KGMP for helping to set up the Rural Health Transformation program this year. Singh said Monday the final contract amount is lower — about $8 million. 

“When we submitted our application. We did our best estimate of what we could project we would estimate for contractor support,” he said.

He said the state budgeted about $18.8 million in total for administrative costs — including the consulting fees — for the year, but now projects it will actually spend about $10 million. 

“With that additional administrative dollars that we will save the state of West Virginia, which we are projecting to be around $8 million, we are looking to reinvest those administrative dollars into programmatic dollars to reinvest into the state of West Virginia,” Singh said.

The five-year Rural Health Transformation Program is funded by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The program was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last summer. The bill makes historic cuts to healthcare spending in the United States. 

The program has awarded West Virginia nearly $199 million for the first year. Singh said the state anticipates the federal government will announce year 2 funding for states on Oct. 31.

Under Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s plan for the federal program, schools, libraries and other community institutions in rural West Virginia would be outfitted for use in telemedicine. The state also plans to use the funding to address the state’s healthcare worker shortage by recruiting high school students to healthcare careers, adding healthcare faculty at regional and technical colleges and using financial incentives to attract and keep providers in rural areas. 

Another of the initiatives, the Rural Health Link, would provide patients access to transportation to medical appointments using public buses, rideshare services and volunteer drivers.

The state has until October to obligate the funds and until September 2027 to actually spend the money, he said.

Of the 75 candidates that have been chosen to receive funding, 73 are West Virginia-based agencies, Singh said. The remaining two have a connection with the state — one operates a facility in West Virginia and another partners with organizations from the state, he said. 

Approximately $4.6 million of the funding has actually been spent — all on administrative costs, Singh said. 

Singh said the department has drafted all of the funding opportunities for this year of the program and have so far posted publicly more than 80% of them. More information about the Rural Health Transformation program and grant opportunities is available on the state Department of Health website.