This initiative addresses these challenges through a three-part strategy:

• (1) expanding the rural healthcare workforce via financial incentives, education partnerships, and tax credits;
• (2) building a sustainable training pipeline with clinical rotations and mentorship programs; and
• (3) enhancing emergency response capacity through community paramedicine and tele-EMS pilots.

This initiative integrates four strategies to create a secure, interoperable infrastructure that links providers, patients, and payers through modern APIs, FHIR-based standards, and real-time data sharing.

• Implement a single, net new state-managed CMS-certified EHR instance to connect rural providers, hospitals, and behavioral-health facilities that currently lack electronic systems, enabling secure, FHIR- and USCDI-compliant data exchange, embedding strong identity, security, and trust safeguards, and aligning with the CMS Aligned Network Framework for transparency and interoperability.
• Establish a milestone-based, reimbursable RTCF-LA to accelerate the modernization of digital infrastructure for rural providers and technology partners.
• Expand access to and promote the use of remote-monitoring devices, such as glucometers, blood pressure cuffs, pulse oximeters, and weight scales, for high-risk and chronic disease patients in rural parishes.
• Enhance access to digital literacy education, training, and technology support, including free or subsidized smartphones with data and health tools for rural residents. Partnering with local clinics, colleges, libraries, and health systems, the program provides hands-on instruction for utilizing digital health platforms.

This initiative will launch risk-sharing and value-based arrangements that enable providers to share savings from improved quality. It will also launch high-impact care models that are currently not billable but have reimbursement pathways. These reforms will help ACOs, FQHCs, and rural hospitals deliver coordinated care that rewards outcomes.

This initiative expands interventions for chronic disease and maternal health. It employs a two-pronged approach: direct nutrition interventions through “food FARMacies” and broader nutritional and fitness programs for rural health.

• Develop regional care conveners and navigation networks to coordinate physical, behavioral, and social-service providers through hub organizations (e.g., FQHCs, CCBHCs, hospitals) and deploy community and school-based navigators connecting residents to care.
• Increase telehealth infrastructure access across rural facilities to support behavioral health, prenatal, and chronic-care services in underserved parishes.
• Expand partnerships among CCBHCs, OTPs, and rural health facilities to provide co-located care like medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and crisis response.
• Establish alternative Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) sites by retrofitting rural hospital spaces for wraparound, community-based services for elderly residents, like day health centers and at-home support.

This initiative will develop a coordinated, multi-modal care infrastructure that unites fragmented services into an integrated framework. While each component serves a distinct function within the health system, together they will strengthen the full continuum of care, creating a cohesive ecosystem.