Telehealth & Covid-19
RHTP Funds Telehealth. Telehealth Funds
Your Strategy. Know the Difference.
Most leaders think of telehealth as a clinical tool — a way to reach a patient who can't easily get to the clinic. That's true. It's also just a small part of what telehealth can [...]
Rural Health’s Leapfrog Transformation:
From In-Person- to Virtual-First
A few decades ago, much of the African continent skipped a stage of infrastructure that took the rest of the world a century to build. Many countries never built extensive landline networks — they [...]
Rural Health Implementation Science: TeleEmergency
In last week’s article, Kathy Letendre and I made the case that TeleEmergency is rural America's most urgent telehealth priority — and that the CMS Rural Health Transformation Program presents a great opportunity to fund [...]
Preparing for RHTP RFPs:
What Rural Health Leaders can do NOW
The Rural Health Transformation Program has set a remarkable amount of activity into motion — 50 state applications submitted, awards issued, revised budgets under review, and RFPs at the state level are beginning to take shape. For most rural [...]
When Telehealth Gear Gathers Dust:
Why Equipment Funding Isn’t Enough
This article is based on a webinar presented by Jen Donathan, Shari Snyder, Ryan Baker, and Christian Milaster for Generation West Virginia’s Broadband Technical Assistance Webinar Series. There is a pattern we have seen play out across community health [...]
Consumer-Facing Digital Health Is Coming:
Are States and Rural Providers Ready?
When CMS designed the Rural Health Transformation Program, it made a deliberate bet: consumer-facing digital health technology — symptom checkers, remote monitoring devices, AI chatbots, chronic disease apps, digital navigation tools — could meaningfully address rural healthcare access barriers if [...]
RPM Works — If You Do It Right:
What the Evidence Actually Shows
When CMS started reimbursing Remote Physiological Monitoring in 2019, a gold rush mentality swept through healthcare. Overnight, vendors promised small clinics easy revenue through RPM billing codes. Large health systems invested millions in platforms and devices, expecting outcomes to follow [...]
What Successful Consumer-Facing
Health Tech Actually Looks Like
When CMS released the NOFO for the Rural Health Transformation Program last year, there was one category that stood out: “consumer-facing digital health”. It’s a welcome, albeit unexpected move in the right direction. However, I'm not sure that eight weeks [...]
RHTP & Consumer-Facing Digital Health:
Why Most Will Fail (And How Yours Won’t)
December 29, 2025 changed everything for rural health transformation. CMS awarded $50 billion across all 50 states through the Rural Health Transformation Program. States submitted their revised budgets. Now comes the hard part: Execution. For states that included consumer-facing [...]