National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services Recommendations

National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services Recommendations

The National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services (NACRHHS), recently released their policy brief and recommendations on how to “Modernize Rural Health Clinic Provisions.”

The NACRHHS picks one or two issues a year and produces a policy brief(s) for the Secretary of HHS. Last year, the committee chose to focus on Rural Health Clinics and we believe they have produced a thoughtful report with several helpful recommendations including:

• Raising the AIR cap on RHCs
• Grants to State Offices of Rural Health to support value-based care
• Allowing RHCs to be distant site telehealth providers
• Modernizing lab requirements
• Allowing masters trained behavioral health providers to be RHC practitioners
• Allowing RHCs to contract with PAs or NPs to fulfill the 50% requirement

You can read the full report for yourself HERE.

We recommend sharing this report with healthcare leaders in your community. If we communicate these ideas to decision makers effectively we can improve the viability of the Rural Health Clinic program.