CUMBERLAND — State, county and local leaders and organizations met Tuesday for a roundtable discussion regarding healthcare in rural regions and the recent implementation of the Maryland Rural Health Transformation program.
“Healthcare workforce is fundamental to how we can improve health in our rural communities,” said Maryland Department of Health Secretary Dr. Meena Seshamani.
“That’s why in our rural health transformation program, we have an entire bucket of work that we want to do around the healthcare workforce.”
The Area Health Education Center (AHEC) West partnered with the Maryland Department of Health to bring together a variety of community voices.
Seshamani led the discussion, opening the conversation to healthcare workers and leaders from primarily Allegany and Garrett counties, who had the opportunity to speak and share their observations of the problems they’ve witnessed and how to improve access to healthcare in rural areas.
Representatives present at the roundtable included U.S. Rep. April McClain Delaney, state Sen. Mike McKay, Del. Terry Baker and multiple Maryland Department of Health officials.
“Over the past year, there’s been a really difficult time for patients, for providers and challenges that have forced us all into kind of rethinking things after what happened with HR11, which I do not call beautiful, I call it the Big Bill,” McClain Delaney said. “But our rural hospitals before that were already struggling to keep doors open and really operating on razor-thin margins with a trillion dollars in cuts to medicaid over 10 years.”
The Rural Health Transformation Program is a section of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that allocated $50 billion of federal funding across the country to support access to healthcare in rural areas.
“This 50 billion has really been allocated for rural areas, which is great and I’m so happy that you all weighed in and were able to get some of this funding, but it’s really important that it’s used well,” McClain Delaney said.
Some of the primary issues that result in limited access to healthcare in the region that were echoed around the table included the lack of behavioral, dental, social work, emergency and specialized services.
Additionally, the lack of reliable public transportation was a substantial topic amongst the group.
Another prevalent issue was the retention of medical professionals in the area.
Melissa Clark, executive director of AHEC West, suggested the lack of economic development in the region creates a large drawback for medical professionals and their families to want to stay in the region.
Seshamani said she took note of the barriers to rural healthcare shared around the table and is looking further into how to best use the funding.
“I think this is going to build as we move from getting some of these ideas to then really starting to implement,” Seshamani said. “We have some of the immediate funds that have gone out with our AHEC and others. There’s a lot more to come as we start to have grantees who are getting grant money, who are being able to put things in place.”