By Stephen Smoot
“The overall vision is to dramatically improve healthcare outcomes for people in the state of West Virginia,” said Governor Patrick Morrisey a few days after he made major announcements at Minnie Hamilton’s Gilmer County facility. Three grants to Minnie Hamilton will bring advanced technology to bear on mitigating challenges in delivering health care and related services in rural West Virginia.
With the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last summer came $50 billion in grant funding that will go to states between 2026 and 2030. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will operate the program. According to a White House release the program “is uniquely designed to promote innovation and long-term sustainability of rural healthcare.” It explained that “when legacy programs link funding to reimbursements for services provided, they do not promote long-term sustainability.” Rural hospitals have lower volumes of patients, but must maintain a certain level of service access to accommodate unforeseen situations such as pandemics or natural disasters.
Each state provided a blueprint of how it would use funding, subject to approval by CMS. West Virginia received $199 million for 2026 and about $500 million for the life of the program. According to the Governor, this represented one of the highest per capita awards in the region. The original stated goals included expanding access through both in-person and digital or virtual medicine, investing in attracting medical talent while retaining workers already in state, improving transportation access for patients, and developing a slate of prevention programs to help rising generations not have to contend with chronic disease.
Last week, he shared that he was “focusing on the fundamentals” of key state issues. He shared his list of health care priorities currently, saying “We need to make sure we’re bringing healthcare closer to patients. So that means more telehealth, it’s investing in technology, and it means mobile healthcare clinics as well. One of the announcements we made this week is going to enable a number of counties to have better access to mobile healthcare. Other announcements allowed us to allow us to bring invest heavily in telehealth.”
West Virginia’s blueprint focused on linkage between health care problems bedeviling the state and also the social and economic impacts. Federal government missteps in creating a nutrition chart that encouraged the eating of carbohydrates and also initially seeing powerful new narcotic medicines in the 1990s as not addictive when they were helped to fuel serious chronic health care problems for decades after. West Virginia has higher than average rates of chronic drug addiction, diabetes, heart disease, and related health issues. Governor Morrisey’s program focused on mitigation of current challenges while putting a focus on prevention.
Said Governor Morrisey, “It’s an opportunity of a lifetime for West Virginia, because it’s the first effort we’ve ever seen that tries to engage in prevention and attack the root causes of problems before they exist and take people out of the workforce.”
The Federal Reserve Economic Data (or FRED) shares that labor force participation has seen the rates struggle over the decades. The late 1970s saw it dip to a little higher than 51 percent, rising by 1990 to almost 56 percent. That slowly dropped by January 2017 to 53 percent with a nadir in April 2020 of 52.7. It has bounced between 53 and 55.5 percent since then. The Mountain State has the lowest percentage while Nebraska has nearly 70 percent of eligible people working.
Chronic health problems related to low rates of workforce participation thus represent a long-term issue that the State has struggled to address for decades.
Getting that participation rate up, according to the Governor, represents the goal of a healthier workforce. The idea lies in getting the body and mind healthy, then the individual will be able to focus on improving his or her condition in other ways. “To me, that’s the essence of rural health transformation,” he said, “because we need to get more people in the workforce. We need to get people healthier. This is a great opportunity to do that. So what does that mean practically? It means that we’re trying to make sure that there’s strong access to healthcare for people in the communities, access to nurses, access to hospitals, access to physicians. We need to make sure we’re bringing healthcare closer to patients. So that means more telehealth, it’s investing in technology, and it means mobile healthcare clinics as well.”
Improvement in workforce participation also translates to easier attraction of investment that brings jobs and tax revenue to the state. Some of the areas that have seen the least progress in economic development unfortunately sometimes also have the highest levels of chronic health issues.
WVU Medicine has seen great success in sending mobile testing units for breast and lung cancer into rural areas and the rural health transformation will build on that, plus expand opportunities for telehealth as well.
Laws, however, may serve as a barrier to expansion of telehealth in some fields. For example, West Virginia requires that to offer telehealth services in optometry, a doctor must be physically present in addition to the provider online. This creates barriers because many communities struggle to attract the services of such professionals. Even Keyser, the second largest city in the Eastern Panhandle with about 10,000 people living in town and nearby, saw one of its main eye clinics shut down services for months because it had no eye doctor on site.
Better access to medicine through advanced technology makes getting to the doctor less of a challenge for rural residents. Those who keep up with regular visits tend to have fewer chronic health problems, but transportation for many remains a struggle. Bringing medicine as close to people as possible reduces barriers.
“All of it does tie together, good economics are tied inextricably with better healthcare outcomes,” shared Governor Morrisey.
