St. Luke likely to feel effects of big grant
Staff writer
Kansas will receive $222 million next year to help stabilize and modernize rural hospitals through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program.
The five-year initiative is designed to strengthen small hospitals, improve patient outcomes, and slow closures of rural hospitals. It will provide $10 billion annually nationwide through 2030.
Locally, St. Luke Hospital is expected to benefit.
Sen. Jerry Moran, who helped get the program included in a federal reconciliation bill, said the investment would help struggling facilities upgrade technology and better serve rural patients.
“We don’t know how we’re going to qualify for it yet,” St. Luke chief executive Alex Haines said. “There’s a couple of areas really being focused on. In January, the state is supposed to really communicate with us how we’re going to apply.”
According to Haines, the state will put the programs together for St. Luke to participate in.
Haines said St. Luke would like to see updates to the hospital’s electronic health record systems.
“We have multiple of them, but if we can get them all to just one, there would be a lot of efficiencies,” Haines said.
Haines said he hoped the investment would have the most impact at the patient level.