Rural Communities Opioid Response Program-Medication-Assisted Treatment Expansion

The Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP) is a multi-year initiative by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) aimed at reducing the morbidity and mortality of substance use disorder (SUD), including opioid use disorder (OUD), in rural communities at the highest risk for SUD. This funding opportunity, RCORP-Medication Assisted Treatment Expansion (RCORP-MAT Expansion), will advance RCORP’s overall goal by establishing and/or expanding MAT in eligible hospitals, health clinics, or tribal organizations in high-risk rural communities. RCORP-MAT Expansion aims to increase the number of access points where individuals living in rural communities with OUD can receive evidence-based treatment. Additionally, recognizing that MAT patients may have other clinical and social service needs, RCORP-MAT Expansion requires that eligible entities provide and/or coordinate complementary services (e.g., provision of or referral to other SUD/OUD and mental health services, assistance with transportation, etc.), as outlined in the Program-Specific Instructions section of this NOFO. For the purposes of this funding opportunity, HRSA defines MAT as the use of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medications, in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies, to provide a “whole-patient” approach to the treatment of substance use disorders.1

The applicant organization must be a domestic public or private, non-profit or for-profit: • Rural Health Clinic, as defined by Social Security Act Section 1861(aa) and 42 CFR Parts 405 and 491; • Critical Access Hospital, as defined by Section 1820 (e) of the Social Security Act and 42 CFR 485 subpart F; • Health Center Look-Alike, defined as an entity that meets all Health Center Program statutory, regulatory, and policy requirements but does not receive funding under section 330 of the Public Health Service Act, as amended (see https://bphc.hrsa.gov/ for more information); • Other small rural hospital with 49 available staffed beds or less, as reported on the hospital’s most recently filed Medicare Cost Report; or • Tribe or tribal organization (excluding health centers that receive Health Center Program federal award funding). The applicant organization must be located in a HRSA-designated rural county or rural census tract in an urban county and all activities supported by RCORP-MAT Expansion must exclusively target populations residing in HRSA-designated rural areas. To ascertain whether a particular county or census tract is rural, please refer to the Rural Health Grants Eligibility Analyzer website: https://data.hrsa.gov/tools/rural-health. Please note that if an organization has an affiliated satellite site in a rural area, but shares the same Employment Identification Number (EIN) as the parent site located in an urban location, then that entire organization is considered urban for the purposes of this award. If the rural satellite office has a unique EIN and acts autonomously from the urban parent organization, then the location is considered rural.

 

Kiley Diop

(301)443-6666