Hundreds of millions of dollars are being doled out to medical facilities across Mississippi as part of the state’s rural health transformation program.
Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday announced 167 awards totaling $104,115,146 through the program. The awards are part of Mississippi’s $205.9 million first-year implementation budget, which officials said will be allocated this year. The Republican governor added that the funding will help modernize, strengthen and transform healthcare in rural communities across the state.
“When we began this work, we set out to do more than simply invest in the healthcare system we already have,” Reeves said. “We set out to transform how rural Mississippians access care – bringing more services closer to home, strengthening the providers and facilities that rural communities depend on, and using technology and innovation to better connect patients to care across our state. Today, we are beginning to see that vision become reality.”
The awards the governor announced represent the first three grant opportunities in the inaugural year of a five-year transformation of rural healthcare in Mississippi. Included in the latest round of funding are:
- Memorial Health System – Harrison County ($2,980,874) – To replace manual chemotherapy order transcription with standardized electronic oncology workflow program, which will improve patient safety, reduce errors and delays, and add clinical decision support for dosing and drug interaction review.
- Memorial Health System – Stone County ($2,874,728) – To fund the purchase of equipment for Secure Clinical Access Platform Modernization to improve virtual desktop infrastructure, replace unsupported shared clinical endpoints and implement modern identity and single sign-on tools across its rural hospitals and clinics.
- Magee Benevolent Association ($2,131,454) – To implement bi-directional integration between infusion pumps and Epic across four rural hospitals, while also replacing pumps at three of the sites.
- Chickasaw County ($1,645,000) – To establish six new service lines including women’s health.
- Tate County Hospital ($1,500,000) – To equip two operating rooms and re-establish inpatient and outpatient surgical care.
- Baptist Memorial Hospital-Calhoun ($1,491,000) – To modernize critical IT infrastructure for four critical access hospitals and one nursing home, which will enable telehealth deployment in emergency and inpatient rooms and prepare patient rooms for Smart Room capabilities.
- Progressive Health of Houston $1,383,406 – To restore outpatient services for endoscopy, vascular diagnostics, minor procedures, portable imaging and wound care.
The full list of the 167 healthcare facilities and projects that received funding can be found here.
Applications for the Mississippi Rural Health Transformation Program’s workforce and psychiatric emergency services initiatives are currently being reviewed and will be announced in the next 30 to 45 days, Reeves said. Officials are hopeful that the investments will help Mississippi train, recruit and retain the healthcare professionals rural communities need.
In October, officials said Mississippi will launch additional opportunities focused on innovative ways to close gaps in rural care and helping rural providers modernize the electronic health record systems they rely on every day.
