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This analysis compares the characteristics of nursing homes in rural areas with those in urban areas. This brief uses data from Nursing Home Compare, a publicly available dataset that provides a snapshot of information on quality of care in each nursing home.
This issue brief explains why it can be misleading to compare the first year of Rural Health Transformation Program allocations with estimated Medicaid cuts, which will be implemented on a gradual basis and not fully take effect until 2027, after the rural health fund is exhausted.
Community health centers served more than 32 million patients in medically underserved urban and rural areas in 2024. This brief reports on health center patients, services, and financing in 2024, using national data from the Uniform Data System (UDS).
This policy watch evaluates state awards through the rural health fund in 2026, the first year of the program. The analysis shows relatively modest variations in total awards this year across states but wide variation in how much states will receive per rural resident.
The Administration’s change to reimbursement for drug administration services represents a step forward in implementing site neutral payment reforms but is modest compared to some of the more sweeping options raised by MedPAC and others.
This brief provides estimates of how $37.5 billion of the $50 billion rural health fund could be distributed across states if all states are approved for funding. Awards from the $37.5 billion could range from an estimated $550 million (in Rhode Island) to just over $1 billion (in Texas) over five years if all states were approved for funding. These differences are relatively modest compared to the wide variation across states in rural health needs.
This brief describes five key takeaways from CMS's Notice of Funding Opportunity for the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. It includes information about how CMS intends to review state applications and distribute funds and ongoing questions about the impact on rural hospitals, the distribution of funds across rural hospitals and states, and issues related to oversight and transparency.
This analysis examines the recent growth of Medicare Advantage as a share of hospital inpatient days. Medicare Advantage rose from 13% to 25% of all inpatient days from 2015 to 2023, although there was wide variation among hospitals.
The new reconciliation law includes a $50 billion rural health fund. This brief describes the rural health fund, explains what the law says about the allocation of funds, and highlights outstanding questions about how the funds will be distributed across and within states to pay rural hospitals and for other purposes.
This data note examines the role that immigrants play in the rural workforce, particularly in industries disproportionately filled by immigrants, including health care, agriculture, construction, and service.
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