Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2/5/2025
Rainelle Medical Center - H80CS18278 Rainelle, West Virginia Rainelle Medical Center (RMC) is a federally qualified health center serving the New River Valley region of Central West Virginia. The Center’s service area includes Fayette, Greenbrier, Monroe, Nicholas, Pocahontas, and Summers Counties, West Virginia. RMC provides a wide array of health services, including primary medical, behavioral health, dental, pharmaceutical, nephrology, and enabling services. Additionally, RMC has the only Black Lung program in the area, showcasing the organization’s dedication to West Virginians and the history of treating patients with occupational diseases. The Center is committed to providing current evidence-based care that follows best practices, including behavioral health (BH) treatment for patients suffering from mental health (MH) or substance use disorders (SUDs). Through this proposal, RMC will expand MH and SUD services, which include the implementation of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD), in its Lewisburg Behavioral Health location. The six-county service area sees a dire need for additional health resources, as over one in five residents have “frequent mental distress” which is defined as more than 14 poor mental health days per month. This coincides with West Virginia’s prevalence of depression (ranking 48th nationwide) and 26.1% of adults having a mental health diagnosis. Suicide rates are also high in the service area, specifically Greenbrier and Nicholas County (21.3 and 27.0 per 100,000, respectively). Compared to the state rate of 20.2 and the national rate of 14.5, the need for access to MH care is evident. Equally harrowing are the rates of SUD; the service area sees over double the rate of drug-related fatalities (65 per 100,000) than the nation (28.2). RMC is proud to serve its community as a safety net provider, offering care to the service area’s low-income and medically vulnerable patients. Many patients in the region are impoverished (17.4%) or low-income (39.4%), which exacerbates health access barriers in the area. Rainelle Medical Center specifically targets these patients, and through this funding opportunity the Center will also focus on populations with diagnosed MH/SUD conditions. The Center estimates that 18,603 patients have a SUD diagnosis, and 19,230 have a MH condition. To address the need for additional services and serve the target patient population, RMC will hire a psychiatrist, a nurse/case manager, two therapists, and one peer support specialist. The psychiatrist, nurse/case manager, one therapist, and peer specialist will support enhanced SUD services, including the implementation of MOUD. The Center does not currently offer MOUD, but due to the prevalence of SUD and lack of providers, RMC is taking on the new service line to provide medications (methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone) to patients. While recruiting a full-time psychiatrist, RMC intends to contract with Iris Telehealth for psychiatry services, offering the Center flexibility and time to recruit a qualified physician and providing patients access to virtual MOUD services. RMC will contract with Iris Telehealth for 216 hours in 2025 for this accommodation. Another licensed therapist will provide additional MH services, as Summers County has recently lost a safety-net BH provider, and the Center is hoping to fill this gap in services. RMC plans to increase the number of patients by 395 annually, including 100 MH and 295 SUD/MOUD patients. RMC anticipates 325 of these patients to be unduplicated. These projections are suitable and feasible for the new full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, based on 2023 UDS data and the Center's historical records. The Center will serve these patients in 2025.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).