The first three subgrant opportunities from the federal government’s Rural Health Transformation Fund have been posted. The three grant opportunities are just the first drops of funding in what will ultimately amount to nearly a billion dollars in debt-financed federal money coming into Idaho’s health care system. These funds, part of a five-year, billion-dollar scheme, were adopted by our ostensibly conservative legislature. As with most of the government's endeavors, we will undoubtedly see an increase in our reliance on federal money while seeing little to no improvement in rural health care.
The first grant opportunity is $1.3 million for project management services to administer the funds. In other words, spending money to administer the money. Expect a substantial sum of money to be spent on services like these, as grants from the Rural Health Transformation Fund come with numerous complex reporting requirements. Sometimes, these reporting requirements ensure project goals are met, but more often than not they simply result in slowing down the real work and end up producing paychecks for overcompensated government consultants.
The second grant opportunity provides $1.2 million for maternal and child obstetrics with a focus on improving emergency readiness for birthing and non-birthing facilities. The third grant is $2.4 million for creating a perinatal quality collaborative (PQC) initiative. The perinatal initiative is administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). PQCs are state teams of hospitals, doctors, researchers, and others that work to improve quality of care for mothers and babies by identifying processes that need improvement.
Next up is $2 million for a Data Analytics and Outcome Evaluation grant, which will build the performance dashboard to track outcomes and data from subcontractors. Essentially, this means they are spending millions to track their self-imposed and likely useless performance metrics. There is another $2 million for oversight of rural facility renovation projects to ensure “cost reasonableness” and “federal grant compliance.” Not off to a great start ensuring cost reasonableness by spending $2 million to ensure it. A further $800,000 will be spent on building out an administrative apparatus to disburse $66 million in rural workforce incentive programs, awarding things such as retention and recruitment bonuses. Who will pay for these things after your federal tax dollars run out? Probably you, through your state tax dollars.
In essence, more federal money for private operators and more federal control over them. How these initiatives will transform rural health remains to be seen, but if one thing is certain, they will transform your tax dollars into wasteful and inefficient government spending to employ an ever-growing, highly paid class of contractors and administrators. It’s a classic: one guy working, four guys watching and reporting.
