Growing Rural Opportunities for Well-being in Health (Grow: Cultivating Hoosier Health), Indiana's Rural Health Transformation Plan. - The State of Indiana, with its lead agencies, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA), the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH), and the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS), collectively under Indiana Health and Family Services (HFS), will launch its landmark “GROW” transformation program utilizing RHT Program funds. Indiana engaged a broad network of rural residents, providers and provider organizations, community leaders, and state legislators to shape the vision and priorities of GROW through extensive collaboration and feedback. Purpose and Project Goals GROW expands Indiana’s Make Indiana Healthy Again initiatives and seeks to invest $1B over a 5-year period to catalyze innovative and sustainable solutions to drive healthier outcomes for Indiana’s rural residents. GROW is fully aligned with the five CMS Strategic Goals with 12 target initiatives, which balance statewide efforts with regionally designed projects led by local networks of providers and community leaders. CMS Goal* Investments and Target Outcomes** 1. Sustainable Access (6% of total funding) Enable rural providers to serve as lasting access points for care and improving overall care coordination to address existing low patient volumes and hospital transfer barriers by establishing a statewide Medical Organizations Coordination Center (1) and enhancing Indiana 211 to support closed-loop referrals (2) 2. Tech Innovation (7% of total funding) Enhance technology infrastructure and digital connectivity across rural health systems to address gaps in secure data exchange and improve patient outcomes by strengthening interoperability networks connecting rural facilities (3) 3. Innovative Care (10% of total funding) Promote patient-centered models of care to address access barriers to preventive and post-acute services by enhancing pediatric and obstetric readiness in emergency departments (4), advancing cardiometabolic care standards (5), improving timely access to prescription medications (6), and strengthening tele-consult (7) and telehealth (8) capacities among rural facilities 4. Workforce Development (10% of total funding) Grow the paraprofessional, physician, and behavioral health workforce to address longstanding and prevalent workforce shortages in rural areas by investing in early career pipelines (9 and 11), removing credentialing and training barriers for community health workers and peers (9), and funding physician stipends and rural preceptorships to incentivize rural practice (10) 5. Make Rural America Healthy Again Catalyze targeted local rural health innovation by addressing community-specific challenges with community-specific solutions through the Make Rural Indiana Healthy Again Regional Grants (12), which will be awarded to regional coalitions through a competitive application process to drive outcomes-driven initiatives and strengthen collaboration among healthcare and community partners (60% of total funding) *Overall administrative costs and indirect costs make up the remaining portion of total funding. ** Numbers in parentheses indicate which of Indiana’s 12 initiatives each activity corresponds to. Looking ahead to the next five years, Indiana will continue to collaborate with key stakeholders and experienced partners throughout the implementation of these initiatives to ensure rural perspectives remain central across all phases of these efforts. Indiana will also hold regular advisory meetings to ensure ongoing accountability and responsiveness to feedback.
