CHARLESTON, W.Va. –Executive director for the West Virginia Rural Health Association, Rich Sutphin, says that rural hospitals will have to adapt as policies are implemented and rules are made surrounding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty now and I think our rural facilities will kind of have to weather the storm and figure out exactly where, where things are going to be, are the revenue streams going to change and those types of questions are really important for hospitals to consider,” Sutphin said.
The bill, which involves major cuts to Medicaid and other federally funded programs, was signed into law on July 4th by President Donald Trump after being passed in both the U.S. House and Senate.
One provision added by the Senate includes $50 billion dollars for the rural hospital funding, intended to offset the Medicaid cuts.
U.S. Senator Shelly Moore Capito said that originally there was only $25 billion, but they doubled the amount at the last minute.
Sutphin told MetroNews that 50% of the money will go to rural hospital’s, 40% of it will be distributed based on a need-based formula, and the remaining 10% is still undecided.
He says that this will help, but not significantly.
“We would expect some of the revenue would help, but it won’t supplant the current revenue cycle that we have in our rural hospitals,” Sutphin said.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimates the bill could cut federal Medicaid spending by $793 million and leave 10.9 million people without health insurance.
Capito says that access to rural healthcare is important to her, and she explained she will make sure that some of the money reaches West Virginia and its rural hospitals.
“We have to have that rural access, we talk about our health statistics all the time, we talk about our community health centers too, but we need those hospitals where there is emergency care available,” Capito said during an appearance on MetroNews Talkline Tuesday morning. “And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that $50 billion come to West Virginia, certainly not all of it, but a part of it to preserve our rural hospital’s, I think that’s exceedingly important.”
There are 300 rural hospitals at risk nationwide, including seven in West Virginia.
Those include Logan Regional Medical Center, Welch Community Hospital, Broaddus Hospital Association in Philippi, Minnie Hamilton Health Care Center in Grantsville, Grafton City Hospital, Montgomery General Hospital and Jackson General Hospital in Ripley.
Sutphin said that if any of those hospitals close, there will be a significant decrease in access to care.
“If we look at certain communities in West Virginia where these hospitals are located, the next closet hospital is over an hour away for a lot of those, so patients and community members will have to travel hours, whereas previously they were able to access quality care right in their community,” he said.
The bill officially goes into effect January 1.