Rural Hospital Provider Assistance Program - AdventHealth Ransom Memorial, Inc., doing business as AdventHealth Ottawa, is a licensed 44-bed rural acute care hospital located in Ottawa, Kansas, and the only full-service hospital serving Franklin County. The hospital provides emergency, inpatient, outpatient, primary care, urgent care, surgical, obstetrical, diagnostic, rehabilitation, behavioral health, and specialty services to residents of Franklin County and surrounding rural communities in east-central Kansas. During FY25, AdventHealth Ottawa provided approximately 42,678 clinic visits, 11,945 emergency department visits, 1,143 inpatient admissions, and 1,870 surgical procedures. AdventHealth Ottawa requests $148,000 through the HRSA Rural Hospital Stabilization Program (HRSA-26-105) to implement a 12-month provider recruitment and retention initiative designed to stabilize its rural healthcare workforce and preserve access to essential healthcare services. The project responds to persistent rural workforce shortages identified through the hospital's 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment, which found healthcare access and provider availability among the community's highest priorities. Local challenges include provider shortages, transportation barriers, chronic disease burden, and the loss of healthcare access that can occur when even a single rural provider position becomes vacant. The project will implement two complementary workforce stabilization strategies. First, AdventHealth Ottawa will provide targeted contractual retention incentives to retain three Express Care providers, three Family Medicine Obstetrics (FMOB) physicians, one Obstetrician/Gynecologist, and one General Surgery provider whose services are essential to maintaining primary care, urgent care, maternal health, women's health, and surgical services. Second, the hospital will recruit one additional FMOB physician through a contractual recruitment incentive to expand access to primary care and maternal health services within the Wellsville service area. These providers collectively support approximately 7,500 annual Express Care visits, 3,200 primary care and FMOB visits, more than 600 obstetrical and women's health visits, and 500 surgical clinic visits each year. The project will preserve recently restored labor and delivery services, strengthen workforce stability, improve continuity of care, reduce appointment delays, minimize unnecessary patient travel, and reduce the risk of service disruptions that disproportionately affect rural residents. Project success will be measured through recruitment, retention, workforce stability, healthcare access, and provider engagement indicators. Key performance measures include recruiting and onboarding one FMOB physician; achieving at least a 95 percent retention rate among funded providers; retaining all targeted Express Care, FMOB, OB/GYN, and General Surgery providers; maintaining uninterrupted labor and delivery services; preserving current service capacity; eliminating vacancies among targeted provider positions; and improving provider satisfaction through ongoing monitoring and continuous quality improvement. Project oversight will be provided by AdventHealth Ottawa leadership with support from Finance, Human Resources, physician recruitment leadership, and executive administration. As part of the AdventHealth system, the hospital has established financial management, contracting, compliance, procurement, and grant administration processes to ensure effective stewardship of federal funds and compliance with HRSA requirements. Following the grant period, AdventHealth Ottawa will sustain workforce stabilization efforts through hospital operating revenue, workforce planning initiatives, and AdventHealth system recruitment and retention resources, ensuring continued access to essential healthcare services for residents of Franklin County and surrounding rural communities.
