Tennessee Awards $119M In ARPA Funds For Health Care Grants
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The Center Square [By Jon Styf] –
Tennessee awarded $119 million of federal funds to fund 41 projects in the second round of the Healthcare Resiliency program Tuesday.
The funds went for capital improvements to increase brick-and-mortar hospital capacity and to Practice Transformation and Extension project to increase health care access.
It was part of the total $3.7 billion in funds through the Tennessee Resiliency Plan, an effort approved by the state’s Financial Stimulus Accountability Group.
The largest grants were capital improvement projects with $19.6 million to University Health Systems and $16.8 million to the Mountain State Health Alliance. Other capital recipients were Shelby County Health Care Corp. ($2.9 million), Cookeville Regional Medical Center ($9.4 million), Bolivar General Hospital ($9.6 million), Dyersburg Health ($2.1 million), Fort Loudoun Medical Center ($5.9 million), Erlanger Medical Center ($3 million), Memorial Healthcare System ($0.3 million) and Henderson County Community Hospital ($0.6 million).
“This funding will support our hospital and health facilities through innovative solutions that expand services, address staffing shortages, and enable providers to meet immediate, emerging, and long-term needs in all communities,” Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, said in a statement.
The stimulus accountability group initially sent $230 million to the Health Resiliency Plan with $145 million for capital grants and $75 million for practice transformation grants. Through the process, $21.5 million of the capital grants were remaining and transferred to the practice transformation program along with the new $20.6 million in funding to allow the program to fully fund 18 projects with a prioritization toward grants helping practices in at-risk and distressed counties.
The largest practice transformation grants went to University Health System for its East Tennessee Community Care Model ($5.2 million) and Ascension Medical Group (Saint Thomas Medical Partners) for its Assessing Social Drivers of Health Initiative ($4.2 million).
Other multi-million dollar grants included Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation for its Electronic Medical Records Transformation Project ($3.7 million), Maury Regional Health Network for expanding the reach of services in Lawrenceburg ($2.4 million), Madisonville Primary Care Group for mobile access to primary and imaging services ($2.1 million), ConnectUs Health for Maternal Community Health Services ($2.9 million) and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis for its Transforming Lives through Healthy Homes ($2.3 million).
It also included Tri State Community Health Center’s It’s About Health ($3.9 million), Hope Family Health’s Upper Middle Tennessee Rural Health Network ($2.8 million), the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing’s road map ($2.6 million), Cumberland Pediatric Foundation’s Increasing Access to Care in Low Resource Clinics ($3 million) and Woodbine Community Organization’s Primary Care for Low-Income Tennessee Seniors ($1.9 million).
About the Author: Jon Styf, The Center Square Staff Reporter – Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonStyf.
