Rural Hospital Flexibility Act of 2025
Summary
What This Bill Does
The Rural Hospital Flexibility Act amends section 1820(g) of the Social Security Act. It rewrites the supported activities for Medicare rural hospital flexibility grants to include critical access hospitals, certified rural health clinics, and rural emergency hospitals. The supported activities include quality improvement, quality reporting, performance improvement, benchmarking, population health, service transformation, linkages and services for behavioral health and substance use disorders, and public health emergency response. The bill also adds a new grant or cooperative-agreement authority for entities that already receive other rural flexibility grants, allowing them to obtain technical assistance, data analysis, and evaluation support for carrying out those grants. Applicants must submit materials at the time and in the manner specified by the Secretary.
Who Benefits and How
Critical access hospitals benefit because the program can support a broader range of quality, reporting, benchmarking, behavioral health, and emergency-response work. Certified rural health clinics and rural emergency hospitals benefit because they are expressly included in the supported provider set. Rural patients benefit if providers use grant support to strengthen services, behavioral health linkages, substance use disorder care, and public health emergency readiness. Grant recipients benefit from technical assistance, data analysis, and evaluation funding.
Who Bears the Burden and How
HHS and CMS rural health staff must administer broader grant purposes, evaluate applications, and monitor technical assistance or cooperative agreements. Rural providers seeking funds must prepare applications and comply with grant requirements. Federal taxpayers bear the cost of any expanded grant use. Small rural providers may need staff time to collect data, report quality measures, and implement evaluation work tied to funded activities.
Key Provisions
- Expands rural hospital flexibility grant activities for critical access hospitals, certified rural health clinics, and rural emergency hospitals.
- Provides support for quality improvement, quality reporting, performance improvement, benchmarking, population health, service transformation, behavioral health, substance use disorder services, and emergency response.
- Creates grants or cooperative agreements for technical assistance, data analysis, and evaluation work supporting other rural flexibility grants.
- Requires applicants to submit materials to the Secretary in the required time and manner.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Expands Medicare rural hospital flexibility grants so critical access hospitals, certified rural health clinics, and rural emergency hospitals can receive support for quality improvement, quality reporting, performance benchmarking, population health, service transformation, behavioral health, substance use disorder services, public-health emergency response, and grant-support technical assistance.
Key Policy Areas
Healthcare, Rural Policy, Medicare
Primary Purpose
Expands Medicare rural hospital flexibility grants so critical access hospitals, certified rural health clinics, and rural emergency hospitals can receive support for quality improvement, quality reporting, performance benchmarking, population health, service transformation, behavioral health, substance use disorder services, public-health emergency response, and grant-support technical assistance.
Policy Domains
Substantive provisions
Identified Gains
- Critical access hospitals
- Certified rural health clinics
- Rural emergency hospitals
- Rural patients
- Grant recipients
Identified Costs
- HHS rural health staff
- CMS rural health staff
- Rural provider administrators
- Federal taxpayers
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeReferred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.
Introduced in House
Mrs. Miller of West Virginia (for herself and Ms. Sewell) …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Certified rural health clinics, Critical access hospitals, Rural emergency hospitals
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology