Bipartisan group of Senators introduced the Rural Hospital Flexibility Act, which would permanently reauthorize and modernize the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program. This program provides states with funding to support rural hospitals through training, technical support, and equipment for improving health care for patients, including emergency medical care.

Marc Verhougstraete, PhD, an associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Arizona’s Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, is participating in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science & Technology Policy Fellowships this academic year.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced new baseline health and safety requirements for hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) providing obstetrical (OB) services to make pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care safer.

The health insurance contract between BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona and Phoenix Children’s Hospital has expired. Without a renewal agreement, in-network insurance coverage for patients insured by AZ Blue will end. Daniel Derksen, MD, is quoted.

The state’s Medicaid agency, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), gave $2.5 million to four rural health centers to fund on-call maternity care services in August 2024. Senate Bill 1720 funded the initiative, allocating a total of $7.5 million over the course of three years to on-call OB-GYN providers in rural and other communities where the services are not available.

With the future of the Affordable Care Act at stake in this year’s presidential election, health care navigators are bracing for the outcome and what it may mean for the communities they help. Navigators said that as funding moves up and down, so does the number of people in their communities who are able to access life-saving treatment. Daniel Derksen, MD, is quoted.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), approved section 1115 demonstration amendments that allow, for the first time ever, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage of traditional health care practices provided by Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities, Tribal facilities, and urban Indian organizations (UIO).

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a program that will support Native American communities to lead public health research to address overdose, substance use, and pain, including related factors such as mental health and wellness.

The Arizona Center for Rural Health was awarded two grants by the Health Resources and Services Administration to support health services in rural communities.
The first grant will provide $3.17 million over five years for the Arizona Rural Hospital Flexibility Program, which supports Critical Access Hospitals in rural areas with training, data collection, analysis and dissemination to improve the quality of patient care and operational performance. The program has been continuously funded for the past 26 years.

An Indian Health Service grant will help Indigenous nursing students pursue higher education while also building new tribal-academic-practice collaborations to improve the care of Native populations.