Now that West Virginia has secured $199 million for rural health initiatives for the coming year, state officials are looking for people to guide the programs.
Earlier this week, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced that West Virginia has secured millions of dollars from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program.
Morrisey said the federal dollars provide a transformative foundation to improve health outcomes, expand access to care, and strengthen families and communities throughout West Virginia. “This award positions our state to deliver better care closer to home and build a healthier future for generations to come,” he said.
Now, the West Virginia Department of Health is launching an expansive hiring effort to recruit experienced leaders to oversee and implement the investment in West Virginia’s healthcare infrastructure.
Available positions include West Virginia’s director and deputy director for the Rural Health Transformation Program in addition to various managerial roles.
“We are ready to hit the ground running with this program, and to do that, we need to recruit and hire talented, passionate individuals,” said Dr. Arvin Singh, West Virginia secretary of health.
“This is a historic opportunity to build a healthier future for West Virginia, and we encourage the best and brightest to join us in this unprecedented effort.”
Once the team is together, Singth said on MetroNews Midday, work will begin on requests for proposals to businesses, hospitals and “anyone really in healthcare tangentially related who could have an impact in these areas.”
He added, “So we’re really looking at vendors and ways we can actually reverse our trend when it comes to chronic disease.”
West Virginia’s framework to use the multi-million-dollar resource includes work to improve:
- Distance between patients and providers
- Lack of access of rural healthcare providers
- Resources to support rural healthcare providers
- Connecting West Virginians to the workforce as they become healthier
- Preventing adverse health outcomes through nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle, and
- Developing groundbreaking technology to simultaneously drive better health and economic growth
“This is an excellent investment for our communities. It’s about fundamentally changing the direction of healthcare in West Virginia, shifting from a sick care system to a true healthcare system,” Singh said on MetroNews Midday.
This is through The Rural Health Transformation Program, created under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to distribute $50 billion over five years across all 50 states to strengthen rural health care.
The program to support rural health grew out of concerns that changes to Medicaid under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would undercut already fragile rural health systems.
Of the full amount, $25 billion is being evenly divided among the 50 states. The remaining discretionary dollars are being allocated to states based on each state’s application, the state’s rural nature and other policies. Allocation to each state is based on a competitive application process and guided by the quality of state-proposed strategies.
“The money that we will receive is for year one,” Singh said, “and if we want to receive money in continuing years above the base award, we need to demonstrate that we can get these dollars out quickly and in a way that’s going to have a high impact.”