Illinois

Illinois's annual award is approximately $193.4 million, its share of the federal $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, structured by CMS as a five-year program. The state has branded its plan Transforming Rural Health Delivery.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) administers the award, working with the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and its Center for Rural Health on eligibility and hospital analysis. Program questions go to dph.crh@illinois.gov.

Illinois has been one of the quieter states publicly, but its plan centers on a Hospital Transformation Program (with planning grants for eligible rural hospitals), a statewide Health Data Utility, and a workforce pipeline. It is building a governance structure with monthly partner meetings and a Rural Health Advisory Workgroup to guide investments.

Illinois RHTP hub →

Illinois has published less initiative-level budget detail than most states so far. Its named priorities are Hospital Transformation, a Health Data Utility, and a workforce pipeline. The Hospital Transformation Program will begin with planning grants for hospitals meeting the state's rurality-threshold eligibility criteria. The full line-by-line allocation will be set out in Illinois's budget narrative and forthcoming Notices of Funding Opportunity.

Illinois is actively drafting Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) rather than posting live solicitations to a central portal yet. In May 2026 it published its Eligibility Criteria and Rurality Threshold Methodology plus a full tabular list of eligible hospitals for the Hospital Transformation Program's planning-grant opportunity — a significant signal from an otherwise quiet state, based on IDPH discharge and ED data (2022–2024) and HRSA rural definitions. An April 2026 HFS presentation laid out an aggressive 2026 schedule for workforce funding, governance, initial collaborative-entity awards, and Hospital Transformation grant standards. The dispatch list below carries the running record.

Per HFS's April 2026 timeline, Illinois planned to launch workforce-funding stakeholder processes in March, stand up its governance structure in March/April, make initial funding awards to collaborative entities in April–May, and develop Hospital Transformation grant standards by July/August 2026. Concrete application windows will surface as the NOFOs are released; watch the HFS hub and the dated dispatches below.

The Rural Health Transformation Program was created by Section 71401 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025) and is administered federally by CMS. In Illinois, spending authority for the $193.4M award is carried by HB0111, the omnibus Fiscal Year 2027 appropriations bill, which passed both chambers June 1, 2026 and was signed by Governor JB Pritzker on June 16, 2026 — now Public Act 104-0464.

Eligibility runs on two tracks. Direct-to-state contracts and NOFOs (now in development) go out as competitive solicitations where firms and collaborative entities bid as prime applicants. Subgrants and subawards flow to rural providers — principally rural hospitals through the Hospital Transformation Program's planning grants, plus workforce and data-utility partners — and it is here that technology vendors and consultants most often engage as subcontractors or implementation partners rather than as direct grantees.

Illinois has not yet stood up a single central RFP portal; watch the HFS RHTP hub for NOFO releases and direct questions to the IDPH Center for Rural Health at dph.crh@illinois.gov.