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A Five-Year, Landmark Vision: Transforming Rural Healthcare

6 November 2025
Blog
5.5 minute read

eClinicalWorks

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Many of the approximately 60 to 65 million Americans who live in rural areas face healthcare challenges unfamiliar to most urban and suburban residents. Healthcare facilities are fewer. Distances are further. The nearest pharmacy may be many miles away. Just finding a doctor and getting to an appointment can be difficult.

The financial and logistical challenges facing rural healthcare continue to grow. Over the last eight years, according to a study from KFF, rural areas have seen more hospitals close than open. Patient volumes are declining. And 44% of rural hospitals have negative operating margins, versus just 35% of urban facilities.

But, as the KFF study notes, one-third of all community hospitals nationwide are in rural areas, and rural hospitals account for about one-third of total hospitals in every state. Whatever the financial and logistical challenges such hospitals and related facilities face, they clearly play an essential role in the American healthcare system.

But how can today’s hard-pressed rural health providers find the help they need?

In July 2025, Congress passed H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes funding for the federal Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) — a $50 billion, five-year initiative that aims to provide rural healthcare facilities and systems with the resources they need to strengthen healthcare access, quality, and outcomes nationwide.

What Are RHTP’s Goals and Strategies for Rural Health?

The RHTP focuses on five key areas, with grant allocations scheduled to be announced by December 31, 2025. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, half of the program’s funds will be distributed equally among all states that submitted approved applications.

CMS notes that the remaining 50% of funds will be distributed “…based on a variety of factors including rural population, the proportion of rural health facilities in the State, the situation of certain hospitals in the State, and other factors to be specified by CMS…”

The RHTP seeks to:

Use evidence-based interventions to improve disease prevention, chronic disease management, behavioral health, and prenatal care.
Help rural providers work together to coordinate operations, technology, primary and specialty care, and emergency services.
Strengthen recruitment and retention of community health workers, pharmacists, and individuals trained to help patients navigate the healthcare system.
Promote innovative care models, incentivize Accountable Care Organizations to lower costs, and shift care to lower-cost settings.
Support technical innovation by supporting access to remote care, improving data sharing, strengthening cybersecurity, and investing in emerging technologies.

The CMS RHTP site includes a list of activities that are eligible for funding, a timeline, and complete instructions on how to apply for funding.

How Does eClinicalWorks Support Rural Providers?

Rural healthcare providers participating in RHTP need a healthcare IT partner with a comprehensive set of solutions to support every aspect of care delivery. From the front office through documentation, Patient Engagement, and Revenue Cycle Management, eClinicalWorks has the technology, experience, and support to help these providers succeed.

Our bundle of AI solutions can ease an organization’s administrative burdens and help expand access to care for all. Offerings include:

Sunoh.ai medical scribe, trusted by more than 90,000 providers nationwide, is helping users save two or more hours daily on clinical documentation. Sunoh uses ambient listening technology to create draft clinical documentation, allowing providers to focus on the patient rather than a computer screen and keyboard.
The healow Genie AI-powered contact center solution handles a wide range of incoming calls, appointment booking, and prescription and referral requests, along with after-hours queries from patients seeking to connect with an on-call provider. Genie is helping reduce administrative burdens on practices’ front-office staff while bolstering patient satisfaction.
The healow No-show prediction model helps keep practices’ schedules full by identifying, with 90% accuracy, which appointment slots are likely to go unfilled. With that information, practices can expand access to care for patients on a waitlist or those who call with last-minute requests.

Overcoming Travel, Mobility, and Technology Barriers

Patients who live in rural areas may face greater obstacles to obtaining healthcare because of a lack of reliable public transportation options. For others, their age and condition, combined with relatively long travel distances to a healthcare facility, may discourage them from seeking care when doing so is necessary or prudent.

eClinicalWorks and healow provide solutions that directly address such concerns, helping improve access to care:

healow TeleVisits™ provide remote office visits that can be a viable option when a patient has a minor concern or needs routine follow-up that may not require an in-person visit. Providers can use existing equipment and have access to the same tools available to them during a physical office visit.
healow CHECK-IN™ allows patients to check in for appointments easily and securely, using a text link or email, thus strengthening engagement and improving show rates and adherence to medication regimens and treatment plans.
Patient Portal gives patients 24/7 access to their health records from the comfort and convenience of their home, at their workplace, or when traveling, using any device with internet access.

Supporting Behavioral Health Needs

Many patients have a complex mix of behavioral and mental health needs. Addressing these effectively can help communities improve overall wellness and avoid the complications that can exacerbate other conditions.

The AI-powered Behavioral Health Module from eClinicalWorks® helps healthcare organizations meet the needs of all patients, whatever their life circumstances and wherever they are in their care journey. The solution can be used by clinics and facilities serving rural communities, including community-based outpatient providers, inpatient psychiatric facilities, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC), providers focused on children and families, and those providing remote care.

The eClinicalWorks Behavioral Health Module offers:

Comprehensive behavioral and mental healthcare solutions for crisis intervention, addiction treatment, and inpatient, outpatient, and partial hospitalization treatments
Screening forms and tools for efficient patient intake and tracking
Telepsychiatry to expand access for those with travel, childcare, and work barriers
Group visits enable efficient care while protecting privacy

Achieving Value-Based Care Goals

Like providers everywhere, rural health practices are increasingly being measured and reimbursed on meeting the goals of Value-Based Care (VBC). Meeting VBC’s standards and benchmarks is best achieved by use of multiple solutions that enroll and track patients in programs designed to meet specific needs.

eClinicalWorks and healow offer a full suite of solutions to support VBC efforts:

Chronic Care Management helps manage the needs of patients with two or more chronic health conditions. Practices can be reimbursed for non-face-to-face services. eClinicalWorks offers ways to simplify patient tracking and claims submissions and offers a CCM Specialists Services option for practices who may lack the staffing or expertise to conduct effective CCM outreach on their own.
Remote Patient Monitoring leverages data from wearable devices to monitor patients’ health in real time.
Transition Care Management helps ensure the quality and continuity of care for patients moving among acute and ambulatory settings, including LACE tool integration to predict the likelihood of 30-day hospital readmissions.
HCC, HEDIS® and other risk management tools help calculate individual risk scores, predict expenditures, and improve visibility into and efficiency of care delivery though a Clinical Quality Measures dashboard.
The Clinical Intelligence for Population Health Records Module (CIPHR) is an AI-powered tool to deepen insight into patient populations by uniting data from multiple modules.

Transforming Your Practice and Succeed with RHTP

From prevention of diseases to more efficient and effective documentation, monitoring of chronic conditions, and cost savings through innovative Revenue Cycle Management, eClinicalWorks and healow offer rural healthcare providers everything they need to fully participate in the federal RHTP.

Click here or contact RHTP@eclinicalworks.com for more information, to speak with our product experts, and to arrange for free demos of any of the healthcare IT products and services above.