KCII News spoke with Senator Chuck Grassley about the Rural Emergency Hospital Program and how that might impact our community. “Most important to let your listeners know that it’s a voluntary program; no one has to make use of this program. But I thought it up about five or six years ago, and it became law in December of 2020; it’s just now being activated by regulations being published by the federal government. So if any hospital in Iowa, or all over the country, wanted to give up their beds and retain everything else, they would be called a Rural Emergency Hospital Program and would be reimbursed for what they do for their community short of having people stay overnight in hospital beds. And if that can make a difference between keeping a hospital open for everything else that the hospital can do for the community, as opposed to going into bankruptcy and shutting it down. It’s a good thing to do.” REH offers a financial lifeline for providers by allowing certain rural hospitals to customize their healthcare infrastructure and provide services that better align with the specific needs of their patient populations. The policy creates a new, voluntary Medicare payment designation that allows either a Critical Access Hospital (CAH) or a small, rural hospital with less than 50 beds to convert to an REH. The goal is to preserve patient access to emergency medical care in rural areas that can no longer support a fully operational inpatient hospital.