Michigan

Michigan's award is approximately $173.1 million in Year 1 federal funds — its share of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program (CMS assistance listing 93.798). The program is a five-year CMS cooperative agreement. The state's enacted FY2026-2027 budget carries the appropriation at $173.2 million after the legislature reduced a $250 million base by $76.8 million to align it with Michigan's actual CMS award. So far MDHHS is releasing the money as a series of themed, mid-size grant funding opportunities rather than a few large ones.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) administers the program, with questions routed to MDHHS-RHTP@michigan.gov. In July 2026 MDHHS established an RHT Advisory Council to strengthen engagement with rural health partners, community leaders and residents, and to make recommendations that inform strategic direction across the program.

Michigan's plan is organized as a four-part “Care Closer to Home” blueprint, built from feedback MDHHS gathered from rural providers, community partners, Medicaid beneficiaries and residents. Its pillars, reflected in the state's grant funding opportunities and subrecipient awards, are Care Closer to Home (hub-and-spoke and access, including transportation), Transforming Rural Health Through Partnerships (collaborative care integration and chronic-disease work), Workforce for Wellness (recruitment, retention and training), and Interoperability in Action (health IT and cybersecurity). The aim is to make one-time federal dollars build durable, sustainable capacity for rural providers.

Michigan has released money in themed batches:

• Workforce for Wellness — $34,231,500 across five competitive GFOs (~73 awards), heavily weighted toward the MSW social-work pipeline ($14.5M), plus a $14,731,500 Rural Health Provider Recruitment & Retention fund and $5.0M for Maternal Health Provider Training.
• Improving Care Delivery and Access through Transportation — $12M across ~15 awards.
• Chronic Disease Collaborative Care (Diabetes and Hypertension Management and Education) — ~$2.5M across ~8 awards.
• Subrecipient awards to date — 124 awards totaling roughly $65M across the four initiatives plus Tribal government awards.

Quality Improvement, Clinical Residency and Cybersecurity are core project tags; the full breakdown is in Michigan's budget narrative and its subrecipient award page.

Michigan procures through its EGrAMS grant system as competitive grant funding opportunities. Recent GFOs include the five Workforce for Wellness funds ($34.2M), the Improving Care Delivery and Access through Transportation Grant Program ($12M), and the Chronic Disease Collaborative Care Fund (~$2.5M). MDHHS also maintains a public subrecipient award page listing 124 awards (~$65M) and an earlier tranche of ~$15M to six entities, led by the Michigan Health and Hospital Association's hub-and-spoke work. Every dated dispatch covering Michigan is listed below, newest first, and it carries the running procurement record.

Michigan's GFOs run on tight, paired clocks — a project-director access-request step a few days before the application deadline, then submission through EGrAMS. For example, the Transportation grant set access requests due August 7 and applications due August 12; the Chronic Disease Collaborative Care Fund set access due August 6 and applications due August 11; and the Workforce for Wellness funds set access due July 30 and applications due August 4. Award periods generally run October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027. Because access and application dates are separate, missing the earlier step blocks the filing. Live windows surface first in the dated dispatches below and via the MDHHS RHTP listserv.

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 Michigan, the appropriation was enacted through Senate Bill 878 (Public Act 21 of 2026) — the FY2026-2027 MDHHS omnibus signed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer on July 21, 2026 — which set the RHTP line at $173.2 million in federal funds, transferred 2.0 positions, and designated the federal grant as a separate fund source.

Eligibility runs on two tracks. Direct-to-state contracts would go out competitively, where firms bid as prime contractors. In practice, Michigan is running most of its money as competitive grant funding opportunities and subawards to a deliberately wide field — 501(c)(3) nonprofits, for-profits, local municipalities, transit agencies, local health departments, health systems, health plans, community-based coalitions, community foundations, universities, and federally recognized Michigan Tribes or Indian Health Clinic programs. That breadth (the Transportation GFO in particular opens the door to the transit-and-access layer that usually sits outside RHTP) is where technology vendors and consultants most often engage as subcontractors or implementation partners.

Track opportunities in EGrAMS via the MDHHS RHTP hub, and sign up for the RHTP listserv to be first to see new GFOs.

MDHHS Rural Health Transformation Program →