Constructing a Digital Spine: How States Can Modernize Rural Healthcare with RHTP Funding

The Rural Well being Transformation Program (RHTP), a $50 billion federal initiative spanning 5 years, presents states with a historic alternative to stabilize and modernize healthcare in rural communities. Central to sustaining rural healthcare is the hub and spoke mannequin, the place a big central hub hospital can present managed providers, specialist entry, and know-how assist to smaller rural spoke services. This mannequin enhances care coordination, useful resource sharing, and specialist availability, making a sustainable regional healthcare ecosystem.

Scaling this mannequin requires vital infrastructure funding to construct a sturdy, safe, and high-performance digital spine. Investments should guarantee dependable broadband connectivity, safe networks, and scalable telehealth platforms tailor-made to the dimensions and capability of every rural hospital—from small Crucial Entry Hospitals (CAHs) to giant regional hubs. We encourage states to type collaborative consortiums involving a number of healthcare suppliers to leverage economies of scale and regional coordination, a essential requirement of the grant. Cisco’s modular, scalable options allow states and their designated hubs to design and deploy this infrastructure, supporting steady affected person care, superior cybersecurity, and operational effectivity.

By investing in digital resilience via the hub and spoke mannequin, states can lengthen high-quality care to rural populations, assist the supply of care that may result in improved well being outcomes, and construct sustainable healthcare ecosystems that stand up to disruptions and develop with group wants. The applying deadline for RHTP is November 5, 2025, making well timed funding essential to leverage this historic funding alternative.

This strategy aligns with RHTP priorities by modernizing infrastructure, strengthening workforce capabilities, enabling revolutionary care supply, and guaranteeing long-term sustainability via scalable, safe, and adaptable digital well being ecosystems.

The necessity for digital resilience in rural healthcare

• Infrastructure Challenges by Hospital Measurement: Rural hospitals differ extensively—from small CAHs with fewer than 26 beds to bigger rural emergency hospitals and regional referral facilities. Digital resilience options have to be personalized to hospital dimension and capability to optimize funding and affect.
• Connectivity and Cybersecurity: Smaller hospitals usually face larger challenges securing dependable broadband and defending in opposition to cyber threats resulting from restricted assets. That is compounded by a historic lack of funding in rural healthcare infrastructure. Moreover, healthcare stays probably the most focused sector for cyberattacks, with the proliferation of related medical gadgets rising the assault floor and complexity of securing these environments.
• Operational Continuity: Disruptions from cyberattacks or infrastructure failures disproportionately have an effect on smaller rural hospitals, risking affected person care and income streams.

Advantages of investing in digital resilience

• Tailor-made Infrastructure Design: Options are scalable and sized particularly for hospital complexity, guaranteeing cost-effective deployment that meets distinctive operational calls for.
• Steady Affected person Care: Dependable networks and backup techniques decrease downtime, guaranteeing uninterrupted entry to EHRs, imaging, and telehealth. Digital resilience can scale back unplanned downtime by as much as 25%, strengthening continuity of look after rural sufferers, particularly essential as almost 96% of healthcare organizations report at the least one unplanned EHR outage, impacting affected person security.
• Enhanced Safety: Superior, built-in cybersecurity protects delicate affected person knowledge and ensures compliance. Fashionable frameworks can scale back safety incidents, with examples displaying a 97% discount in knowledge entry incidents from phishing simulations. That is important, as 92% of healthcare organizations skilled at the least one cyberattack in 2024, disproportionately affecting rural hospitals.
• Operational Effectivity: Secure IT infrastructure reduces workers burden and helps revolutionary care fashions like distant monitoring and digital collaboration. By scaling telehealth and RPM, states can lengthen entry to specialists for an estimated 87% extra rural sufferers who presently journey greater than double the space of city sufferers for care, considerably enhancing entry and completion charges.
• Financial and Group Stability: Dependable healthcare infrastructure attracts and retains residents, supporting rural financial improvement.

Price and funding issues

• Funding Scale: Prices differ based mostly on hospital dimension and current infrastructure. Smaller hospitals require foundational community upgrades and cybersecurity, whereas bigger hospitals ought to spend money on scalable knowledge facilities and superior telehealth platforms.
• Price Effectivity: Cisco’s modular and scalable options enable phased investments aligned with hospital capability and progress projections, optimizing return on funding.

Alignment with RHTP priorities

• Modernizing Infrastructure: Upgrading telemedicine/collaboration platforms, community resilience, and cybersecurity tailor-made to hospital dimension.
• Strengthening Workforce: Supporting recruitment and retention via dependable know-how and coaching.
• Modern Care Supply: Supporting the supply of preventative care, continual illness administration, and behavioral well being providers via scalable AI-powered digital infrastructure tailor-made to rural well being group wants.
• Sustainability: Guaranteeing long-term operational and monetary viability via resilient techniques and shared useful resource fashions.

Subsequent steps

States should submit their RHTP purposes by November 5, 2025. Investing now in digital resilience tailor-made to rural hospital dimension will rework healthcare supply, assist the supply of care that may result in improved affected person outcomes, and construct sustainable well being ecosystems. Cisco stands able to companion along with your state to develop compelling purposes and implement options that maximize this singular funding alternative.

For extra data on navigating the funding course of with confidence, attain out to Cisco’s Public Funding Workplace.