Texas plans to send more than $8 million in grants to 28 rural healthcare providers across the state, Governor Greg Abbott announced Thursday, part of an ongoing push to shore up hospitals and clinics in communities that have been losing care options for years.
The Governor Abbott Press Office
said the funding will expand access to quality care in rural communities, help recruit and retain healthcare professionals, and upgrade medical facilities. A list of the 28 providers is available, but individual award amounts were not disclosed. A separate release from
gov.texas.gov
put the figure at $8 million, while KTSA reported the state plans to award more than $8.1 million to the same 28 providers — a discrepancy neither source resolved.
What the Money Is Meant to Fix
According to KTSA, the funding is designed to help rural hospitals improve chronic disease care, recruit and retain healthcare workers, replace aging medical equipment and upgrade facilities. The grants are part of the Rural Texas Strong initiative, funded through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, the station's report notes. Per the same account, the grants will become available only after contracts between the state and individual providers are finalized — a timeline that has not been disclosed.
The Rural Health Transformation Program itself is a much larger pot of money. Texas is receiving an estimated $1.4 billion in federal funding over five years to improve rural healthcare statewide, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which was notified of the award by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The station's report adds that Texas already received more than $281 million in first-year federal funding under that program.
A State With the Most Hospital Closures in the Country
The stakes behind the grant announcements are laid out starkly in older but unrebutted research. Since 2005, Texas has seen 24 of its rural hospitals close, the highest number of any state in the nation, according to a report from the APM Research Lab last updated in December 2021. The same report found that 28 percent of Texas counties had no hospital at all as of that update.
APM Research Lab also found that rural hospital closures, which had stabilized for a period in the late 1990s, have been on the rise again since the 2008-2009 recession. The report also describes challenges recruiting and retaining healthcare workers in rural communities.
Part of a Larger Pattern of State Awards
HHSC also plans to award $78 million in Rural Texas Strong grants to 216 rural healthcare providers throughout the state, according to a separate announcement from the agency.
CMS has separately described a $78 million Texas investment supporting the rural health workforce, chronic disease prevention and facility upgrades, language that closely tracks the goals cited for the newest, smaller round of grants.
For now, the identities of the 28 providers set to share the latest round of funding have not been released, and neither has a schedule for when contracts will be finalized and the money will reach hospitals on the ground.
