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Table of Contents:
Region of the Week: Bowling Green, Kentucky
Federal Policy: FY26 Labor-HHS Appropriations & Health Extenders
A Full Day of Training and an Island Closer to Care
Missouri Bets $6.5 Million on Care That Comes to You
Read Time: 4 minutes
Region of the Week: Bowling Green, Kentucky
Bowling Green's Medical Center EMS just landed $310,070 from Kentucky's Rural Health Transformation Plan.
The money buys two more at-home visit vehicles, plus two LifePak 35 monitors for point-of-care ECGs.
Two board-certified community paramedics already run the program, checking on patients after they leave the hospital.
Visits cover medication reconciliation, fall risk checks, and chronic disease follow-up, the kind of care that keeps someone out of the ER.
The program's been running more than a decade. This grant is about giving it room to reach more people, not starting from scratch.
Federal Policy: FY26 Labor-HHS Appropriations & Health Extenders
Congress folded a big health policy deal into the FY26 Labor-HHS funding bill, signed into law Feb. 3.
Telehealth flexibilities get extended through the end of 2027, and the hospital-at-home program runs through fiscal year 2030.
Rural hospitals keep their low-volume and Medicare-dependent payment adjustments through the end of 2026.
Pharmacy benefit managers now have to pass through 100 percent of manufacturer rebates to Medicare drug plans, part of a broader PBM transparency push.
$418 million goes to rural health programs and $1.4 billion to health workforce funding, money that trickles down to programs like the others in this issue.
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Paramedic Training
Georgian Bay General Hospital spent a full day training paramedics from Beausoleil First Nation, who serve Christian Island.
The goal is straightforward: build up clinical skills so BFN paramedics can treat more on the island itself, instead of sending people across the water to the ED.
Chief Joanne Sandy, the community's paramedicine superintendent, and the BFN chief paramedic all showed up to make the partnership real, not just a press release.
GBGH's chief of staff framed it as something built together, not delivered from the hospital outward.
It's a small, local story, but it's the same idea behind every mobile integrated health program: care that meets people where the drive to the hospital is the actual barrier.
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State Funding
Missouri's Department of Social Services is putting $6.5 million behind mobile integrated healthcare and community paramedicine in rural parts of the state.
Right now only about 30 percent of rural Missouri communities have access to this kind of care. The funding is meant to close that gap.
Individual EMS agencies can get up to $250,000 to start a program, and regional systems can qualify for as much as $500,000.
The Missouri EMS Association is running the rollout and is aiming for 14 operational sites statewide.
It's part of a much bigger $216 million federal award to Missouri, so this $6.5 million is really just the piece earmarked for getting paramedics into people's homes before a small problem becomes an ER visit.