Wyoming

Wyoming's award is approximately $205.0 million in Year-1 funding, its share of the federal $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. CMS structures the program as a five-year, spend-down initiative — a point Wyoming learned firsthand when CMS rejected the state's proposed perpetuity/endowment fund (which had aimed to stretch an anticipated ~$1 billion over five years for decades). Wyoming refiled a revised plan without the fund, which CMS approved in May 2026.

The Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) administers the program; WDH Director Stefan Johansson has represented the plan to state lawmakers. Program contact is wdh-primarycare-ruralhealth@wyo.gov. The plan was shaped by extensive community town-hall feedback documented in a state-maintained shared drive.

Wyoming's plan focuses on stabilizing essential rural healthcare infrastructure rather than funding temporary programs or unneeded specialty services. Driven by the fundamentals of high fixed costs and low patient volumes across its frontier regions, the state prioritizes access to foundational care — emergency departments, reliable ambulances, and primary care — and building a durable workforce pipeline, alongside longer-term population-health investments.

• Emergency medical care access — roughly 48% of the budget, the largest share. Includes the “Critical Access Hospital – Basic” (CAHB) incentive rewarding small hospitals for maintaining 24/7 emergency departments, stroke/trauma imaging, and local ambulance service; EMS regionalization incentives; and “BearCare,” a public major-medical plan for residents priced out of comprehensive insurance.
• Workforce pipeline — over 25% of the budget, funding educational support and post-graduate medical slots for physicians, nurses, and EMS personnel in exchange for five-year rural service commitments.
• Population health — longer-term investments to improve rural health outcomes.

Recurring focuses on record include EMS stabilization, robotics, pharmacy, and high-risk care. The full breakdown is in Wyoming's approved plan.

Wyoming opened its RHT application portal on July 1, 2026, hosted on Submittable, where applicants apply for the program's Request for Application (RFA) sub-initiatives. Separately, three technology-vendor procurements run through the standard state process on Public Purchase as competitive RFPs: 3.2 Statewide telespecialist platform, 3.3 Non-emergency transportation coordination, and 3.4 Centralized billing capacity — two of the three were linked as of July 11, 2026. The running record is in the dispatch list below.

Wyoming RHT Application Portal →

The key date on the record is the RFA application close: midnight on August 2, 2026 (the Submittable portal lists the required 0.1 Applicant Eligibility Information form ending early on August 3). Everyone applying for any initiative (except those marked “information only”) must complete that 0.1 Applicant Eligibility Information form first. The three tech-vendor RFP deadlines post on Public Purchase; current dates surface first in the dated dispatches below and on the portal.

The Rural Health Transformation Program was created by Section 71401 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025) and is administered federally by CMS. Wyoming administers its award through the Wyoming Department of Health. A defining piece of state action was Wyoming's attempt to establish a perpetuity/endowment fund to stretch the funding beyond five years; CMS rejected that mechanism, treating the RHTP as a spend-down (not stretch-down) program, and Wyoming's approved plan proceeds without it.

Eligibility runs on two tracks. Subgrants/subawards flow to rural providers — hospitals (including Critical Access Hospitals), EMS agencies, clinics, and other rural health entities — who apply for the RFA sub-initiatives through the Submittable portal, and it is here that technology vendors and consultants most often engage as subcontractors or implementation partners. Direct-to-state contracts go out as the three competitive technology-vendor RFPs on Public Purchase (statewide telespecialist platform, non-emergency transportation coordination, centralized billing capacity), where firms bid as prime contractors. Any applicant should start with the required 0.1 Applicant Eligibility Information form.

Wyoming RHTP hub → RFA application portal →