Co-hosted by Philips and the Health Impact Alliance, this virtual workshop brought together 16 health system leaders and 5 industry leaders to discuss sustainable rural health transformation. Workshop participants heard from Madeline Cree, MPH (Associate Director, The Academy Advisors), Dr. Bill Beninati, MD, FCCM (Chief Medical Officer, Virtual Hospital, Intermountain Health), and Mike Lemnitzer (VP, State Government Healthcare, Philips) to explore Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) implementation and case studies highlighting Intermountain’s non-extractive “hub-and-spoke” model and Philips’ rural-focused health system partnerships addressing barriers to healthcare access.
Key Takeaways
Design for sustainability, not for RHTP: RHTP was never designed to sustain rural ecosystems of care, and the economics of health system investments should consider how they will outlive the 5-year RHTP funding window and provide bridge funding to support short-term needs for rural hospitals. Intermountain Health’s hub-and-spoke model is grown mainly through value-based contracts and Philips builds new virtual care lines around reimbursement parity and legislation.
Keeping care local only works if it keeps the money local too: Intermountain’s “non-extractive” hub and spoke model leverages system resources to provide integrated services through its virtual hospital. Philips supports virtual rural monitoring hubs that are built to keep patients and the services they need inside the rural community, instead of requiring transfer to an urban center.
Rural innovation can be a blueprint for care delivery innovation generally: As margin and workforce pressures intensify for all health systems, resource optimization becomes increasingly crucial. Sanford Health’s EHR-mined, AI-powered colorectal cancer risk score provides an example of this—prioritizing scarce clinical resources for the highest-risk patients while reducing transportation burden for patients that don’t meet the risk threshold.