Last fall, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) detailed how states can apply for funds from the Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program created under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act passed last year. The RHT Program is a $50 billion fund that creates an opportunity to develop strategies for disease prevention and management, substance use disorder, and mental health care over the next five years. At the end of December, CMS announced that all 50 states will receive awards under the RHT Program to strengthen and modernize health care in rural communities across the country.
You can read the project abstracts for all 50 states here. So far, we have been able to identify eight states that mention pharmacy in their abstracts: Florida, Idaho, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. If you would like to discuss a pharmacy-related provision in your state's plan, please contact us.
In 2026, states will receive first-year awards from CMS, averaging $200 million within a range of $147 million to $281 million. In addition, CMS announced the formation of the Office of Rural Health Transformation within the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services.
NCPA worked with our partners to encourage the governors of all 50 states to leverage pharmacists in the programs and proposals when applying to the RHT program. To help states procure the required evidence-based data to support inclusion of pharmacy services in their RHT applications, NCPA launched a community pharmacy research library, which includes published papers, outcome metrics, payment and policy analyses, and implementation tools that can be cited in the state proposals.
