Rural health care in Connecticut could get lifeline from feds

CT Examiner – Thursday, September 11, 2025
By Brian Scott-Smith

Despite potential cuts to Medicare and Medicaid access under the Trump Administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, rural health care providers could see $50 billion in relief through its Rural Health Transformation Program — the largest federal investment in rural health care since 2003.

In less-populated northeastern Connecticut, cuts to health care services have left residents traveling many miles elsewhere in the state for care.

In Willimantic, Hartford Healthcare received state approval to close down the labor and delivery unit at Windham Hospital in 2023, citing safety risks and financial viability. And several services at Rockville General Hospital in Vernon have remained closed since 2020, according to a report filed in bankruptcy court earlier this year.

Rockville is one of three Connecticut hospitals owned by Prospect Medical Holdings, which filed for bankruptcy in January.

Kyle Kramer, CEO of Day Kimball Health, said the rural provider — which serves about 125,000 people from its Putnam-based hospital — struggles with the lack of public transportation, forcing it to shoulder the burden of getting patients to and from its facility.

“We don’t have large urban access on many levels. And as a result of that, what we find ourselves with is a population that is based on a lot of farm community type activity. And when you have that type of geography you’re dealing with a lot of two-lane roads and a lot of back country,” he said.

Kramer said Day Kimball has contracts with local ambulance services, which provide limited patient transport, but noted their use takes ambulances out of service for potentially more urgent matters. And it’s not just a transport issue, he added.

“The population that we serve here in northeast Connecticut is largely federal in nature. By that I mean that they are insured either by Medicare or Medicaid, and that comprises 70 to 75% of our payer mix depending upon the month,” he said.

Kramer said smaller health care systems that depend heavily on federal programs for funding make it harder to provide local services or send patients to partner organizations.

The Rural Healthcare Subcommittee, a task force set up by Sean Scanlon, the state’s Comptroller as part of his wider Comptroller Healthcare Cabinet, aims to tackle those issues.

“The task force aim is to identify those issues that are unique and germane to rural communities, to develop concepts and ideas that we can present as potential candidates for legislative intervention to the state of Connecticut, and also to work on strategies that broaden access, improve equitability of distribution and increase affordability for patients to receive care and for providers to provide that care,” said Kramer, the committee’s co-chair.

Kramer said his and the other task forces in the cabinet are having an impact.

“We’re starting to hear legislators recite those types of things back as a part of their speak about health care and health care access, about its distribution and about its overall affordability,” he said.

As far as the $50 billion from the feds, Kramer said the task force will be “working very closely with other members of the state legislature, as well as the Office of Policy and Management and the Department of Social Services to develop the application that the state of Connecticut will be submitting to the federal government on this front.”

The new fund appropriates $50 billion to rural health care programs across the country from fiscal year 2026 through fiscal year 2030. It’s being overseen by the Senate Committee on Finance.

Half of the $50 billion will be divided equally among states that submit an application to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which will administer the program — meaning each state would receive at least $100 million per year for the duration of the program.

The remaining $25 billion would be distributed to states based on a formula developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that will take into consideration a state’s rural population, portion of health care facilities in rural areas and hospitals that serve a high proportion of low-income patients.

“The one thing about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is it’s a whole lot of pages that we’re still reading through on many levels,” Kramer said. “And anytime you have legislation of this nature, there’s what’s written and then there’s what’s left for interpretation, and that interpretation is what we will be working through as a team.”

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