Dear Stakeholders and Program Participants,

The Rural Support Payment was created to help facilitate the statewide hospital transformation and delivery reform efforts in the Colorado Hospital Transformation Program (HTP). Total funding available is $12,000,000 per year for five years, beginning with federal fiscal year (FFY) 2020-21.

The Department has been working diligently with the Colorado Hospital Association and other stakeholders over the last several months to ensure the funding for the Rural Support Payment is allocated to hospitals with the greatest need. In previous communications, this included 17 hospitals that contributed to the bottom 10% of the three-year average net patient revenue (NPR) of all critical access or rural hospitals. This eligibility criteria has been revised to include an additional six hospitals that contribute to the bottom 2.5% of the fund balance (from the 2019 Medicare Cost Report) for critical access or rural hospitals that were not eligible as a result of the NPR criteria. In addition, only nonprofit hospitals are qualified after all eligibility criteria are considered.

For each qualified hospital, the annual payment is equal to $12,000,000 divided by the total number of qualified hospitals. A qualified hospital must submit an attestation form requesting funding up to the amount available per hospital to be eligible for payment. If a qualified hospital does not request the amount available per hospital or does not submit an attestation form, the remaining funds will be redistributed to a qualified hospital demonstrating need beyond the amount available per hospital. The attestation form must be completed annually to ensure the hospital is qualified for the Rural Support Payment throughout the five-year HTP endeavor. A list of qualified hospitals can be found below.

The Department invites any feedback and/or questions to the Rural Support Payment dedicated email address by Friday, Dec. 11, 2020. Following this and input from the Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE) Board, the attestation process will begin for qualified hospitals, with a request date of Friday, Jan. 22, 2021.

The attestation form, as well as additional information about the fund, can be found on the Rural Support Payment website.