The Montana Hospital Association (MHA) will be transitioning its 2020 in-person annual healthcare conference originally scheduled for September 29 – October 2 in Billings to a new virtual conference plus additional online education opportunities that will take place October 5 – 9, 2020. Click here to register!

MHA has canceled the in-person conference activities in light of the latest COVID-19 developments, CDC guidelines, and other federal, state and local requirements. We also recognize that many hospital and health system professionals must remain available to their organizations locally during this uncertain time.

We hope you’ll consider joining us for this virtual event. MHA has been providing online education for our members for 10 years and has successfully converted other in-person member meetings and education to virtual formats. Earlier this spring, our 2020 MHA Health Summit recorded its largest-ever attendance with our virtual format.

We look forward to offering you the same vibrant programming, impactful networking, and opportunities to reflect and connect over the emerging topics in your fields. Moving our face-to-face conference to a fully online format presents us with the unique opportunity to spotlight the best of what the online modality affords – meaningful collaboration and the ability to reflect and connect with colleagues around the state of Montana.

On behalf of everyone at MHA we would like to thank you for the work that you do. We are confident that this is in the best interest of everyone involved with this event to ensure that you and your team are able to continue to care for the patients and families in your community.

The Technical Assistance and Services Center (TASC), in coordination with the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP), are pleased to the release of a new resource: The COVID-19 Funding Sources Impacting Rural Providers guide. This funding resource is intended to support rural health care providers, along with their state and local partners, navigate the availability of federal funds to support the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response and recovery efforts.

Seven tables, or matrices, are provided for quick reference at the beginning of this resource. The tables can be used to check eligibility of participation in funding sources by provider types: rural prospective payment system (PPS) and critical access hospitals (CAH), rural health clinics (RHC), federally qualified health centers (FQHC), long-term care (LTC) or skilled nursing facilities (SNF), tribal facilities, and emergency medical services (EMS). The tables also provide an at-a-glance view for each provider type sharing the different types of funds that may be accessed from various funding sources dependent on their participation eligibility. Each funding source is described in its own section of this resource with an executive summary followed by further detail on the use of funds, reporting requirements, hyperlinks to the legislation and detailed information.

Please feel free to share this resource broadly.

The National Rural Health Resource Center (The Center) is also pleased to announce a new COVID-19 Collection located on The Center’s website. This collection consists of trusted and reliable resources, such as the COVID-19 Funding Sources Impacting Rural Providers Guide listed above, along with standing links to additional organizations’ COVID-19 resources, FAQs, webinars, tools, and trainings. The Center aims to help direct the most up-to-date and relevant tools and resources to rural hospitals, clinics, and their communities. This Collection will be updated regularly to help assist with the abundance of circulating information relating to COVID-19.