Why Should Delaware Care?
Healthcare in Delaware is among some of the most expensive in the country. As cuts to federally funded programs like Medicaid are set to go into effect later this year and commercial insurance rates rise, Delaware is looking to reinvent its healthcare ecosystem with a federal grant.
Delaware is set to receive another hundred-million-dollar sum to continue building out the state’s rural healthcare infrastructure over the next four years.
Earlier this week, state officials announced Delaware would receive $160.3 million in its second year of funding from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), a provision of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that earmarks $50 billion for states to improve their rural health care infrastructure.
The program doled out its first award last year, and Delaware received $157 million.
Delaware officials have already spent the funds investing into health infrastructure in Kent and Sussex counties, including building the state’s first medical school and two new homeless service shelters in the lower counties.
The program was created to court Republican senators hesitant to support more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which could disproportionately impact rural communities and their healthcare facilities.
And as Delaware’s second-year award will soon enter the state, a question looms over one of its hallmark projects: Who will be dean of its new medical school? Delaware officials announced in June the state’s first medical school will be run by Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University.
Jefferson beat out three other bidders — the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM), Puerto Rico-based Ponce Health Sciences University and consulting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers — to win the medical school contract.
Delaware officials will likely announce the inaugural dean before the end of the year.
State leaders also hope to fund 13 additional programs, including additional preventative care, financial assistance for medical students that commit to working in Delaware for five years after graduation, and robust nutritional education.
Gov. Matt Meyer said in a press release earlier this week the funds have already been at work. The state is building out programs to bolster the state’s healthcare workforce and lower costs for patients, he said.
“A Delawarean’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can afford to see a doctor or get the care they need,” Meyer said in the release.
Community health centers
Earlier this fall, Delaware officials made their most recent award to three community based health centers to build out rural preventive care.
The three Delaware medical centers will receive nearly $23 million this year, as state officials look to invest deeply into primary care options for Delawareans and shift how the state pays for its medical services.
State officials met outside of La Red Health Center in Georgetown in September to make the announcement, where they hope these funds will help to modernize the federally qualified health center’s preventative care capabilities.
Federally qualified health centers, also known as FQHCs, are community-based clinics that typically offer primary care services in medically underserved areas.
The $22.7 million injection into the state’s three primary FQHCs represents Delaware’s effort to reframe its healthcare ecosystem: keep people healthier on the front end so they are able to avoid costly emergency room visits.
Leaders from Delaware’s primary FQHCs — La Red, Wilmington’s Henrietta Johnson Medical Center and Westside Family Health Care, which has locations in Kent and New Castle County — gathered in September to discuss how the awards would help to modernize their operations.
The CEO of Westside Family Health Care, Chris Fraser, said the funds would support modernization efforts that have often been out of reach for the smaller health centers.
Additionally, he said incoming reductions to Medicaid, set to go into effect at the end of December, will stretch the health centers financially.
“Some of us are doing well, and some of us are really challenged operationally to make ends meet,” Fraser said. “So the coming Medicaid cuts are going to, unfortunately, make that worse.”
