Date: January 6, 2022
The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy is pleased to announce the Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program (RMOMS) is open on grants.gov (announcement number: HRSA-22-115) and accepting applications through April 5, 2022. A total of $5 million is anticipated to fund up to five health networks in this cooperative agreement program. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has funded two cohorts of RMOMS awards: New Mexico, Missouri and Texas in FY19, and Minnesota, Missouri, and West Virginia in FY21.
The program intends to demonstrate the impact on access to and continuity of maternal and obstetrics care in rural communities through testing models that address the following RMOMS Focus Areas: 1) Rural Hospital Obstetric Service Aggregation and Approaches to Risk Appropriate Care, 2) Network Approach to Coordinating a Continuum of Care, 3) Leveraging Telehealth and Specialty Care, and 4) Financial Sustainability. The goals of the program are to: (i) improve maternal and neonatal outcomes within a rural region; (ii) develop a sustainable network approach to increase the delivery and access of preconception, pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postpartum services; (iii) develop a safe delivery environment with the support and access to specialty care for perinatal patients and infants; and (iv) develop sustainable financing models for the provision of maternal and obstetrics care in rural hospitals and communities. Moreover, this program will allow awardees to test models in order to address unmet needs for their target population which could include populations who have historically suffered from poorer health outcomes, health disparities and other inequities.
Eligibility for the program requires that the applicant organization must be part of a group of entities that are either an established or a formal network, which may need to be expanded to meet this program’s network definition. A network is defined as an organizational arrangement among three or more separately owned domestic public and/or private entities, including the applicant organization. For the purposes of this program, the applicant must have a network composition that includes: 1) at least two rural hospitals or Critical Access Hospitals (CAH); 2) at least one health center under section 330 of the Public Health Service Act (Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) or FQHC look-alike); 3) at least one Medicare-certified Rural Health Clinic (RHC), to the extent which these entities are in the network service area and engaged in pregnancy and obstetrics care; 4) at least one Level III and/or Level IV facility (as defined by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists); 5) regionally and/or locally available social services in the continuum of care (i.e., state Home Visiting and Healthy Start Programs to the extent which these resources are available in the service area); and 6) the state Medicaid agency. Eligible applicants may request up to $1M each year in the program’s 4-year period of performance September 1, 2022 through August 31, 2026.
A live technical assistance webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, January 26, 2022, 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET to assist applicants in preparing their applications. The webinar will be recorded and playback information can be accessed at the RMOMS webpage.
Call-In Number: 1-833-568-8864
Participant Code: 06048296
Link: https://hrsa-gov.zoomgov.com/j/1606904058?pwd=cWVmR2RaZm1UYnB5OGc0VFFiSGlsdz09
All application materials will be available on grants.gov and must be submitted electronically under the funding announcement on the grants.gov website. For questions about this funding opportunity, please contact Victoria (Vicky) Tsai: RMOMS@hrsa.gov.