Gov. Ron DeSantis announced about $189 million in grant money was handed out this month to bolster healthcare in remote areas without access to major medical centers.
It's part of a Trump administration effort to deliver $50 billion in rural health funding nationwide over the next five years.
Meanwhile, the federal government is cutting Medicaid by some $137 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan health policy research group, KFF.
And Medicaid’s losses will be hard to recoup, even with the targeted federal cash, said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando.
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“We're talking about a cluster of fiscally constrained counties to serve approximately 1.2 million Floridians, and these are areas that are incredibly underinvested. Their tax base is pretty shallow and the need is really, really, really great,” she said.
Most of the money for Florida, $81 million, goes to the Panhandle. Southwest Florida received $45 million, largely to set up satellite clinics and boost telehealth in areas without hospitals.
The Southeast, near Miami, got just $12 million. Northeast Florida received $51 million.
“I am concerned about the ability to attract providers to our state when we don’t increase the Medicaid reimbursement rate,” said Eskamani. “That’s a huge piece of this that cannot be ignored.”
The grant money does not pay for the leasing of land or the salaries of medical staff. And Florida’s Medicaid reimbursement rates are among the lowest in the country, meaning providers don’t get paid much for serving the needy public.
"When it comes to a provider doing this work, where is their compensation, and is it strong enough to attract a workforce in these areas?" said Eskamani.
Some local grant-winners for the Southwest region include Tampa Family Health Centers, Central Florida Health Care and Lee Health Systems.
The largest share of the money, $43.7 million, goes to the nonprofit Community Health IT, or CommHIT, which operates across Florida, plus 47 other states and the District of Columbia.
CommHIT is headquartered at Kennedy Space Center and “focuses on the discovery and efficiency of processes and technologies dealing with the remote care of all people — particularly those in rural and other remote areas,” according to its website.
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars are allocated to Florida universities under the category “workforce development.”
That includes $2.8 million to Florida A&M University, over $1 million to Florida State University, $801,000 for the University of South Florida, $488,000 to Florida International University and $341,000 to Florida State College.
FSU also gets $1.2 million under a category called “health and lifestyle,” according to a list of grants and awards from the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
Florida Senate President Ben Albritton, R-DeSoto, said the awards are “transformational” for rural Florida and will “stabilize rural healthcare, expand access and improve outcomes for Florida’s rural residents.”
According to Eskamani, oversight will be critical in the coming months and years.
“It’s important to survey and observe the operations of this program on the ground, those who are impacted, how access is provided, to really ensure that 1.2 million rural Floridians that this program is supposed to benefit actually see that benefit," she said.
