Vermont

Vermont's Year-1 award is $195,053,740.44, 100% CMS-funded under Notice of Award #RHTCMS332047-01-00. It is Vermont's share of the federal $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, which CMS structures as a five-year initiative (roughly one-fifth of the national $50B is distributed to states in Year 1, with additional annual allocations across the five-year period).

The Vermont Agency of Human Services (AHS) administers the award, with the Department of Vermont Health Access (DVHA) running much of the procurement. The Project Director named on the CMS Notice of Award is Jill Olson, Executive Director for Medicaid at DVHA. General program contact is the State Office of Rural Health at AHS.VDH_SORH@vermont.gov; individual solicitations name their own contacts (for example, Kristin Seiffert at ahs.contracts@vermont.gov).

Vermont organizes its entire award into five named Strategic Initiatives — Regionalization, Shared Services, Primary Care, Workforce Development, and Price Transparency — broken into 35 discrete activities. The thrust is to build stronger rural health networks, improve technology and shared operations, strengthen the rural workforce, and ensure Vermonters get the right care at the right time at an affordable cost. Initiatives 3 (Primary Care) and 4 (Workforce Development) are the largest by activity count and, as of mid-2026, carried the clearest forward procurement pipeline.

The plan funds thirty grant subrecipient activities plus consultant and contractor procurements across the five initiatives. Key project focuses on record include AHEAD integration, rural health information technology, and workforce housing, alongside mobile dental and MH/SUD units, community paramedicine, a shared EHR/EMR platform, a shared HRIS, a statewide closed-loop referral system, e-Consult, remote patient monitoring, telehealth, a Family Medicine residency, and pharmacist test-to-treat scope expansion. The full activity-by-activity budget breakdown lives in Vermont's approved Project Narrative and Budget Narrative.

Vermont has moved fast, releasing tight single-purpose grants and RFPs in rapid succession through the Vermont Business Registry. Named solicitations include the first RFP for SUD Recovery Residences (March 9, up to $500,000), Mobile Health Care Clinics, Pharmacy Test-to-Treat, Mobile Integrated Health, a Stakeholder Engagement / Statewide Health Care Delivery Strategic Plan RFP, an AI Transcription/Scribe NOFO, Remote Patient Monitoring, Telehealth, and E-Consult NOFOs, five DVHA Blueprint capacity-building RFPs, Shared EHR and Shared HRIS NOFOs, an independent program-evaluator RFP (Year-1 ceiling $1,000,000), a Green Mountain Care Board Health Data Infrastructure Transformation RFP, a statewide Closed-Loop Referral System RFP, paired Regional Care Redesign and Facility Upgrades NOFOs (Facility Upgrades $50,000–$2,000,000), a Mental Health Urgent Care RFP for Rutland County, and a Centralized Interfacility Transfer NOFO. The running record of every posting is in the dispatch list below.

Vermont RHT RFPs & NOFOs →

Vermont uses rolling application windows: applications received by 7/17 (10 p.m.) were considered for a September 1 start, and applications received by 8/17 (10 p.m.) are considered for an anticipated October 1 start — making August 17 the next live cutoff at the time of writing. Subrecipient contracts are anticipated to start August 1, 2026 on a 14-month base period through September 30, 2027, with up to four one-year extensions. The state has committed to a weekly Friday email summarizing newly posted opportunities; specific per-solicitation deadlines surface first in the dated dispatches below and on the funding page.

The Rural Health Transformation Program was created by Section 71401 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025) and is administered federally by CMS. Vermont administers its award through AHS under CMS-approved project and budget narratives. A key state action is Act 68 of 2025, which underpins the Stakeholder Engagement and Statewide Health Care Delivery Strategic Plan work at the center of Initiative 1 (Regionalization). Vermont has also attached two notable state guardrails to its subrecipient grants: a federal clinician non-compete clause (funds may not support clinician wages at facilities that impose non-competes) and AHS Attachment F, which requires written permission before AHS-funded service data can be used to train AI technologies.

Eligibility runs on two tracks. Direct-to-state contracts go out as competitive RFPs (for example, program evaluation, data infrastructure, and consulting engagements), where firms bid as prime contractors. Subrecipient grants and NOFOs flow to rural providers — hospitals, FQHCs and health centers, independent provider groups, home health, long-term care, community-paramedicine agencies, and community service providers — and it is here that technology vendors and consultants most often engage as subcontractors or implementation partners. Many provider grants are gated to rural ZIP codes (2020 RUCA score ≥ 2), and all subrecipients must hold an active SAM registration and valid UEI before award.

Vermont RHT hub → Join the RHT list →