Est. reading time: 14 minutes

You cannot apply to CMS for RHTP money. That is the single most important thing to know about the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, and it is the thing most health centers learn too late.

CMS funds states. States fund you.

Each year of the program, CMS releases an installment to all 50 states. There is no federal application portal for a health center to find, and no way to appeal directly to CMS for a share. Your state then runs its own grant programs, RFPs, and procurement processes to move that money out to hospitals, clinics, FQHCs, and other rural providers.

The application door is in your state capital.

A note on how fast this is moving. State RHTP programs are being designed, announced, opened, and closed on a rolling basis, with new opportunities posting somewhere nearly every week. The examples in this guide illustrate the shapes these programs take. They are not a current list, and several referenced here have already closed. Treat them as patterns to recognize, then go check what your own state has open right now. The section on where to look is the part to act on.

This guide covers how the money flows, what state processes tend to look like, where to find your state’s opportunities, and how to be ready before a window opens rather than after it closes.

The short version

• CMS funds states, states fund you. $10 billion per year for five years, FY2026 through FY2030. States receive it, then re-distribute through their own grant and procurement processes.

• Every state’s process is different. Some run competitive RFPs. Some work through third-party administrators. Some route funds through existing state agencies.

• The windows are short. State opportunities have run anywhere from about two weeks to a couple of months from posting to deadline.

• Future years are not guaranteed. Each year, CMS reviews state progress and sets the following year’s funding levels. Unspent funds can be returned to the Treasury and redistributed.

• “Transformational” is the operative word. RHTP is built to fund structural change to how care gets delivered, not routine operating support.

How the money moves: CMS, then your state, then you

The Rural Health Transformation Program appropriates $50 billion across all 50 states from FY2026 through FY2030, administered by CMS in $10 billion annual installments. Congress created it in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as an offset to the anticipated rural impact of that law’s Medicaid reductions.

Half of each year’s $10 billion is split evenly among all approved states. In the program’s first year, that meant $100 million per state regardless of size.

The other half is where it gets interesting, and where a common misconception needs correcting.

That second half is not distributed by pure formula. CMS steers it using two inputs. The first is a state’s rural score, which weights factors like rural population and rural facility share. The second is a discretionary “technical” score, which CMS assigns based on the quality of a state’s proposal and its willingness to adopt certain policy actions.

An analysis by the University of North Carolina’s Cecil G. Sheps Center isolated how much each state received from the technical score alone in the first year. The spread was wide: Alaska scored highest, while New Mexico had under 10% of its award tied to discretionary metrics.

This matters for a practical reason. Discretionary dollars can be re-pooled and reallocated between years. As Sheps Center director Mark Holmes observed, states should expect their amounts to shift year over year based on that redistribution. Your state’s allocation is not a fixed five-year number, which means the competitive environment inside your state can change between one funding round and the next.

The result of all this is enormous variation in what a state actually has to spend per rural resident. A KFF analysis of first-year awards found a nearly hundredfold spread, from roughly $66 per rural resident in Texas, which has the largest rural population in the country, to roughly $6,300 in Rhode Island. Ten states came in under $100 per rural resident. Eight came in over $500.

The strategic read holds regardless of the specific year’s numbers. In a high-population rural state, there is more total money and far more competition for it. In a small state, there is less money overall but a much thinner applicant pool. Both are worth knowing before you decide how much effort a given application deserves.

What a state grant window actually looks like

States do not hand RHTP dollars directly to every eligible rural provider. They move their allotment out through their own processes, and those processes vary more than most health centers expect.

Three recurring patterns are worth learning to recognize.

Competitive RFPs run by the state health department. Minnesota, for example, has distributed the bulk of its allotment as grants to rural and Critical Access hospitals, rural Tribal Nations, FQHCs, and rural CCBHCs and CMHCs. These look like traditional state grant competitions, with published scoring criteria and a fixed submission deadline. They tend to be the largest opportunities and the most competitive.

Narrow, capped, first-come opportunities. Pennsylvania posted a small pool of RHTP funding specifically for FQHCs and FQHC Look-Alikes to implement Certified Electronic Health Record Technology, capped per organization, and open only until the funding cap was met. That window ran eleven days. Opportunities in this shape are the easiest to miss and often the easiest to win, because the pool of organizations watching closely enough to catch them is small.

Large thematic initiatives. New York released tens of millions of dollars under a single named initiative focused on rural community health integration. Wisconsin ran a rural technology fund open to organizations operating FQHCs in rural and semi-rural communities. These are built around a theme the state committed to in its plan, and they reward applicants whose project already fits that theme rather than those trying to retrofit one.

The pattern worth internalizing: these are short, specific, and thematically constrained. A generic readiness posture does not help. Knowing your state’s stated priorities, and having a project already scoped against them, does.

Where to find your state’s opportunities

There is no single federal list. Finding your state’s windows takes deliberate, ongoing effort, and it is the highest-leverage administrative work available to a rural health center right now.

Check these four places, and check them on a schedule:

1. Your state health department’s RHTP page. Nearly every state has stood one up, and most post opportunities there first. Many offer email notification lists. Subscribe to every one you qualify for.

2. Your state primary care association. PCAs have generally been faster than state agencies at flagging FQHC-eligible opportunities to their members, and many provide application support.

3. The National Rural Health Association. NRHA’s Center for Rural Health Innovation maintains RHTP resources organized by state.

4. Third-party trackers. Several now maintain frequently updated views of where each state stands in its procurement process and what is currently open.

One organizational note matters more than it sounds: assign this to a named person. The health centers capturing RHTP dollars are the ones where somebody’s actual job includes checking these sources weekly. The ones missing windows are the ones where everyone assumed someone else was watching.

The annual cycle, and the pressure it creates

The program runs on a rhythm that repeats each year, and understanding it tells you when to expect activity.

CMS releases that year’s installment. States must clear administrative steps, including submitting revised budgets, before they can draw funds down. That process consumes months, which compresses each year’s actual distribution into a shorter window than the calendar suggests. States then run their own opportunities against that compressed timeline. Later in the year, CMS reviews how states are performing and sets the following year’s funding levels.

Two consequences follow, and both persist across the life of the program.

The first is opportunity. States are evaluated partly on whether they can spend the money well and on schedule. That creates real pressure to move funds out the door and show results. A health center that shows up with a scoped, measurable project is easier for a state to say yes to than one that needs three months of hand-holding. States that are behind on distribution are especially motivated to find credible applicants quickly.

The second is risk. Unspent allotments can be returned to the Treasury and redistributed. Money your state does not move is money your region loses, and it does not come back later.

What RHTP will fund, and what it won’t

Each state’s approved plan describes how it will use funding across a defined set of priorities. Those priorities are consistent across states: improving access to care, improving health outcomes, prioritizing new technology for prevention and chronic disease management, building regional partnerships, growing the clinical workforce, and shoring up the long-term financial solvency of rural hospitals.

Two signals about what actually gets funded are worth reading closely.

First, technology is a near-universal theme. A KFF Health News review of state project abstracts found that a third of states want to improve electronic health records, and every single state mentioned telehealth. If your project has a technology component that improves access or care coordination, it is aligned with what states themselves committed to.

Second, and less comfortably: large vendors have noticed. Rural hospital leaders have described being flooded with outreach from for-profit companies wanting to partner on applications. Terry Scoggin, former interim CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals, said he was “blown away about how many for-profit companies reached out.” You are competing for reviewer attention against organizations with dedicated grant teams.

What consistently does not get funded is routine operating support. RHTP is explicitly meant for transformational, evidence-based initiatives. An application that reads as a request to cover existing costs is a weaker fit than one built around a specific, measurable change to how care gets delivered. This is the most common reason a technically eligible health center writes a losing application.

The workflows that make an application credible

Here is the practical problem. “Transformational, evidence-based initiative” is abstract. Reviewers need something concrete. The strongest applications name a specific place where care is currently falling through, describe the structural fix, and state how the result will be measured.

For most rural health centers, three of those places are predictable.

The phone. More than 40 million people live in a rural primary care shortage area, and 92 percent of rural counties are designated primary care HPSAs. Federal projections suggest the rural physician supply will meet only 68 percent of demand by 2037. That shortage shows up first at the front desk, because call volume does not shrink to match available staff. Only about four in ten working-age rural adults can get a same-day or next-day primary care appointment. Roughly 38 percent of rural adults have used an emergency room for something a primary care practice could have handled. Calls that go unanswered during business hours mostly do not get answered at all. An unanswered call quietly becomes an access problem, and access is among the most consistently named priorities across state RHTP plans.

Chronic disease follow-up. Most health centers can identify which patients are overdue for an A1C check or a blood pressure recheck. Far fewer have a system that reliably reaches those patients before they turn up as a same-day walk-in with a complication. Outreach that depends on a staff member’s bandwidth on a given day is not a system. It is a hope.

The space between care settings. A patient discharged from the hospital, or referred to a specialist, generates paperwork and comparatively little follow-through unless someone tracks it end to end. Referral leakage and missed post-discharge follow-up are well-documented drivers of avoidable utilization in rural systems. They show up in the finances too, as Transitional Care Management revenue nobody billed and specialist visits that never happened.

None of these are staffing problems in the sense that hiring five more people would fix them, even if a health center could find five more people to hire in a labor market already short on clinicians. They are workflow problems. The work depends on a person remembering, calling, checking, and following up, every time, without fail.

That distinction is exactly the one RHTP reviewers are trying to make. A workflow that fails because a person got busy is a structural problem with a structural fix, and a structural fix is fundable.

Automating a task vs. redesigning a workflow

There is a meaningful difference between the two, and it maps closely onto the difference between a routine operating request and a transformational initiative.

A reminder text tells a patient they have an appointment. It does not rebook the one they just canceled, and it does not flag that the same patient has not been seen for their chronic condition in eight months.

A dashboard shows a care manager which patients are overdue. It does not call them, book them, or document the outreach in a form a grant program will accept as evidence of impact.

A redesigned workflow closes the loop without waiting for a person to notice it is open:

• A call that comes in after hours gets answered by something other than voicemail, and routed correctly the first time.

• A patient six weeks overdue for a diabetes visit gets a text, then a call, then a spot on the schedule, without anyone opening a spreadsheet.

• A patient discharged on a Friday gets a follow-up call Monday, automatically, documented well enough to support a TCM claim.

• A referral gets tracked until the appointment happens, not just until the fax confirms it went out.

Each of those has a number attached to it. Calls answered. Gaps closed. Discharges followed. Referrals completed. That is what makes a project writable into an application and defensible in a progress report.

Where HealthHelper fits

HealthHelper’s modules sit at this layer. Each is priced by what it does, so a health center can start with whichever workflow is breaking down hardest and have something concrete to point to when its state opens a relevant window.

What to have ready before a window opens

Short windows do not leave time to build an application from nothing. They leave time to assemble one from pieces you already have. The health centers that move fastest keep a standing file with five things in it.

A baseline number for each broken workflow. Not an estimate. An actual figure: how many inbound calls went unanswered last month, how many patients are currently overdue for a chronic disease visit, how many discharges in the last quarter got a documented follow-up within 14 days. These take a week to pull the first time and an hour to refresh after that. Without them you cannot describe a problem specifically or propose a measurable target.

A one-page project description you can adapt. State what breaks, what you would change structurally, what it costs, and what you would measure. Keep it flexible enough to reshape for a technology RFP, a care-coordination RFP, or an access initiative, because you will not know in advance which your state will post.

Your standard attachments, current. Audited financials, board roster, service area and patient demographics, HPSA designation, 501(c)(3) letter, UEI and SAM.gov registration. SAM registration in particular expires annually and takes weeks to renew. Check yours during a quiet stretch, not during an open window.

A named internal owner and a decision path. Who monitors the sources, who writes, who signs. If an application needs board approval, know in advance whether your board can approve by email between meetings. Health centers have missed windows on scheduling alone.

One or two partnership conversations already started. Many state programs favor regional collaboration between providers. A partnership formed in the week before a deadline reads that way to reviewers. A relationship you have already been building does not.

None of this requires a grant writer. It requires deciding in advance that RHTP is worth being ready for, and spending a few days on it now rather than a frantic week later.

A gut check before your next application

Before applying to a state RHTP program, or deciding how to deploy funding already awarded, five questions are worth answering honestly.

1. Do you know what your state currently has open, and what it plans to open next? If nobody can answer this today, that is the first gap to close.

2. Where are calls actually going unanswered, and what happens to those patients afterward?

3. Where does chronic disease follow-up depend on one specific person remembering to make one specific call?

4. Where does a referral or discharge sit for days before anyone checks on it?

5. Could you write a two-page proposal in a week if a fitting window opened tomorrow? Given how short some of these windows run, this is not hypothetical.

That last one is the real test. A health center that can point to exactly where its workflow breaks down, and describe a specific, measurable plan to fix the structure rather than fund more of the status quo, is in a stronger position for the application and for whatever rounds follow it.

The window is the constraint

RHTP puts real money behind rural transformation. But the money is not waiting for you. It moves through state processes on state timelines, and it goes to organizations that are ready when those processes open.

Which version of this program a given health center ends up in depends less on how much its state received and more on whether somebody is watching for the windows, and whether there is a scoped project ready to go when one opens.

If you are mapping your state’s RHTP programs against what is actually breaking down day to day, that work is worth doing before a window opens, not after.

Sources and where to check current status

Program mechanics and analysis:

•          CMS, Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program Overview

•          CMS, $50 Billion in Awards to Strengthen Rural Health in All 50 States

•          KFF Health News, States Race To Launch Rural Health Transformation Plans

•          KFF, First-Year Rural Health Fund Awards by Rural Resident

•          KFF Health News, Big Companies Position Themselves for Payday From $50B Federal Rural Health Fund

•          UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center, RHTP Funding Amounts and State Policy Actions

•          Commonwealth Fund, The State of Rural Primary Care in the United States

A multi-site FQHC on athenahealth keeps roughly 41,500 calls a year out of its queue, live in four weeks.

Client Snapshot

As an FQHC, Greater Seacoast Health provides comprehensive, accessible care regardless of patients’ ability to pay: a mission that demands operational excellence at every touchpoint, including patient communications.

The Challenge

At peak hours, Greater Seacoast Health’s patient services team faced a math problem with no good answer: call volume that outstripped capacity, a labor market that made hiring agents slow and keeping them uncertain, and patients waiting on hold either way. Covering peak demand with staff alone would have meant five additional hires, a cost the FQHC’s mission-driven budget couldn’t absorb.

The staffing challenge was structural, not temporary. Recruiting qualified agents was difficult, turnover was a constant risk, and every new hire carried a heavy training burden. Unpredictable demand plus an unstable workforce left leadership unable to guarantee a consistent patient experience, especially during unexpected coverage gaps.

Organizational complexity added a final layer. With multiple specialties, locations, and departments, each with distinct scheduling rules and care team logic, routing patient requests correctly required institutional knowledge that was difficult to capture, transfer, or scale.

By the Numbers

The Solution

HealthHelper implemented a purpose-built AI agent that integrates directly with Greater Seacoast Health’s athenahealth EHR and handles the full range of common patient requests in real time.

The platform was purpose-configured for Greater Seacoast Health’s organizational complexity. HealthHelper’s AI Success Services embedded the organization’s scheduling rules, departmental workflows, care team logic, and location-specific nuances into the solution, and continues to iterate as the organization evolves.

Results

The impact was immediate and measurable. Since go-live:

What’s Next

Live within four weeks, the initial deployment’s success has Greater Seacoast Health evaluating additional areas where HealthHelper can reduce costs and improve the patient experience.

What would 45% fewer calls mean for your health center? Get in touch.

As states roll out Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funding, FQHCs are facing a practical question: What AI technology can we implement that will deliver measurable value for our health center while qualifying for RHTP funding?

HealthHelper offers a suite of AI-powered solutions that align with RHTP priorities by improving patient access, strengthening care coordination, and supporting sustainable care transformation.

Key Takeaways

• Five purpose-built AI modules cover access, chronic disease outreach, care gap closure, post-discharge follow-up, and referral coordination.

• Modules priced on usage and value creation, not a flat license fee.

• No new hardware, EHR overhaul, or lengthy IT project is required to get started.

• Each module generates structured outcomes data suited to RHTP goals.

  
  

Call Helper

An AI voice agent that expands patient access.

Call Helper answers overflow, after-hours, and unanswered calls, resolves routine scheduling and administrative requests, and routes more complex needs to the appropriate staff member or queue. It increases call capacity while reducing call center and front-desk workload, all without adding headcount.

Visit Helper

Proactive, data-driven outreach that improves care plan adherence and patient access.

Visit Helper identifies patients who are due or overdue for care, engages them through text messages and phone calls, and schedules appointments directly within your existing workflow. It’s designed for panel management, preventive care, and chronic disease follow-up.

Care Gap Helper

Improves quality performance through care coordination and care gap closure.

Care Gap Helper combines EHR, payer, and quality data to identify and prioritize patients who are overdue for screenings, lab work, immunizations, and chronic disease management. It then coordinates the appointments and services needed to close those gaps, helping organizations improve quality metrics and value-based care performance.

Transitions Helper

Reduces avoidable readmissions and supports Transitional Care Management (TCM) revenue capture.

Transitions Helper ingests hospital and emergency department discharge data, prioritizes patient outreach, schedules timely follow-up appointments, and screens patients for additional needs following a care transition.

Referral Helper

Closes referral loops and improves access to specialty care.

Referral Helper tracks outbound referrals from the time an order or authorization is placed, verifies whether specialty appointments are scheduled, helps patients overcome scheduling barriers, and ensures completed consult notes and results make their way back to the primary care practice.

Why It Matters for RHTP Applications

These solutions, supported through RHTP funding, present a unique opportunity to fund sustainable health center transformation. FQHCs can start with the one or two modules that align most closely with their state’s highest-priority RHTP initiatives, then expand over time as funding grows and outcomes data demonstrates success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to launch a module?

Most FQHCs can begin engaging patients or routing calls within a few weeks of onboarding.

Do we need to replace our EHR or phone system?

No. HealthHelper is designed to work alongside existing systems rather than replace them.

Can we start with just one module?

Yes. Most FQHCs start with the module tied to their most urgent operational or funding priority and add others over time.

Key takeaways

• RHTP makes $50 billion available to states over five years for rural healthcare transformation.

• States are required to show measurable progress against clinical and operational outcomes to keep receiving funds.

• AI-enabled remote care and coordination tools have already been named as an eligible use of funds in published state guidance.

• FQHCs are explicitly recognized as eligible applicants, partners, and subrecipients.

• Programs that can launch quickly and report outcomes early are best positioned to compete for funding.

The Rural Health Transformation Program is now moving from announcement to action. States have begun releasing their transformation plans and, in some cases, their own funding notices for local providers, and the window for FQHCs to position themselves is open now rather than later.

Most published guidance points to the same three clinical objectives: reducing avoidable hospital utilization, improving chronic disease management, and strengthening care coordination. Applicants who can show a clear, near-term path to those outcomes tend to score better than those proposing broad, undefined initiatives.

One detail worth flagging for FQHCs: AI-enabled care coordination technology has already been called out as an explicitly eligible use of RHTP dollars in at least one state's funding notice. That's a meaningful signal for organizations weighing whether a technology investment fits within program guidelines.

How HealthHelper Supports RHTP-Aligned Programs 

HealthHelper's suite of AI modules, Call Helper, Visit Helper, Care Gap Helper, Transitions Helper, and Referral Helper, was built to generate exactly the kind of outcomes data RHTP applications and ongoing reporting require. Because each module is priced on usage rather than a large upfront license, FQHCs can deploy them quickly and start building a reportable outcomes record without waiting on a lengthy procurement cycle.

If your organization is preparing an application or has already been awarded funding, now is the time to line up the technology that will let you prove impact from day one.

Care New England and Integra Community Care Network (Integra) embarked on a transformative partnership with HealthHelper, aiming to address care gaps and enhance population health management. In just the first year of the HealthHelper partnership, this collaboration has led to significant advancements in patient retention and quality metrics, underscoring the impact of innovative healthcare solutions.

Achieving Notable Increases in Preventive Screenings and Quality Metrics

Through the integration of HealthHelper’s technology-enabled care gap closure services, Care New England reported substantial improvements in preventive care screenings:

• Breast Cancer Screenings: 13% increase

• Colorectal Cancer Screenings: 16% increase

• Hypertension Screenings: 10% increase

• Diabetic Eye Exams: 61% increase

• Diabetic HbA1c Screenings: 29% increase

These enhancements reflect a concerted effort to close care gaps and promote early detection, pivotal components of effective population health management.

Strengthening Patient Retention and Care Coordination

A cornerstone of the partnership’s success is the impressive 88% in-network retention rate for screening mammograms. By ensuring patients receive coordinated care within the Care New England system, the collaboration has fortified patient trust and continuity of care. This strong care coordination helps ensure that patients receive their follow up care while also improving the financial standing of an important healthcare provider to the Rhode Island community.

Financial Impact and Return on Investment

The partnership has also yielded significant financial benefits:

• Appointments Scheduled: 5,245 across the care continuum in the first year

• Return on Investment: 3.4x

These outcomes highlight the dual advantage of enhancing patient care while achieving financial sustainability.

Seamless Epic Integration and Provider Workflows

Implemented in under two months, HealthHelper’s solution seamlessly integrated with Care New England’s Epic platform. This swift deployment alleviated administrative burdens, allowing providers to focus on delivering exceptional patient care. One team member remarked, “This is the easiest implementation project I’ve ever had!”

Leadership Endorsement: A Model for Scalable Success

Dr. Ana Tuya-Fulton, President and Chief Operating Officer of Integra and Chief Population Health Officer of Care New England, emphasized the strategic value of the partnership:

“Our partnership with HealthHelper has delivered measurable value for both our health system and our ACO. Their AI-powered Care Gap Closure services have improved performance, driven results, and seamlessly integrated into our workflows.”

Better Population Health with AI-Powered Care Coordination and Care Gap Closure Services

By combining technology-driven automation with high-touch patient engagement, HealthHelper is transforming how healthcare organizations identify, engage, and close care gaps at scale.

To learn more about how HealthHelper’s AI-powered Care Gap Closure services can support your organization, contact Jake Kahane at jake@healthhelper.co. To read more about the partnership between HealthHelper, Care New England, and Integra, check out this post by Care New England.

At HealthHelper, we believe that healthcare providers should spend their time delivering care, not chasing administrative tasks, managing fragmented workflows, or struggling to keep up with complex payer contracts. Our mission is simple: to take the work off providers’ plates so they can focus on their patients.

To dive deeper into HealthHelper’s journey, the challenges we’re solving, and what’s ahead, I sat down with Jake Kahane, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer. We talked about what inspired him to start HealthHelper, the role AI plays in scaling care coordination, and his vision for the future of provider workflows.

From automating care gap closure to orchestrating complex workflows across healthcare networks, HealthHelper has built the infrastructure that allows providers to do more with less. Here’s what Jake had to say about how we got here and where we’re headed next.

1. What inspired you to start HealthHelper?

The idea for HealthHelper really started with a simple observation: In population health, there’s no shortage of data, but providers struggle to turn that data into action. Health systems and medical groups have dashboards, reports, and lists of patients who need care, but actually operationalizing interventions: getting patients scheduled, closing care gaps, and ensuring follow-through was a major challenge.

Over the years, I have learned a lot about patient engagement, care navigation, and what actually works to activate patients in their healthcare. It became clear that the place where this mattered most was primary care and preventive medicine, where the right intervention at the right time can prevent complications and improve long-term outcomes.

I wasn’t sure we were going to start a business, but I’ve always subscribed to the belief that when you have an idea, you just keep taking small steps forward and reassess along the way. The more we dug into the concept, the clearer it became that primary care providers were drowning in work. And when we started talking to them, practice managers, and staff, their reaction was the same: this would be a huge help.

That’s what keeps driving us today. We continue to hear from our clients that we’re making a real difference: offloading administrative burden, improving patient engagement, and ultimately helping practices succeed in both value-based and fee-for-service care.

2. What’s the biggest problem HealthHelper is solving today?

The biggest challenge we’re solving is simple: helping practices get more done with limited resources. Whether it’s a high-performing practice trying to scale or a group struggling to improve quality scores, the core issue remains the same: there’s too much work and not enough time or staff to handle it all effectively and efficiently.

We hear this all the time: “We’re doing fine now, but as we grow, we know this isn’t a scalable approach.” Even top-performing practices run into this. They’re doing well, but everything still feels manual, fragmented, and inefficient. They know they can’t just keep working harder forever. And with constantly changing rules, payer demands, and operational complexities, it’s impossible to keep up without burning out.

The reality is, health systems, FQHCs, and medical groups know they need to close care gaps, improve coding accuracy, and meet quality targets, but they simply don’t have the bandwidth to do it efficiently. Staff are stretched thin, payer contracts keep evolving, and existing technology isn’t built to fit seamlessly into their workflows.

To make things even more challenging, hiring more people isn’t always the answer. Human capital is expensive, and many organizations can’t afford to throw money at the problem just to end up right back where they started. And when staff leave, it creates an even worse situation, disrupting workflows and setting them further back.

That’s where we come in. HealthHelper eliminates these barriers. We bring the right mix of technology, automation, and people to help practices actually get this work done, without adding to their burden.

From a product perspective, we’ve built a reliable, future-proof solution that not only helps practices scale but also protects them when they need to contract. Whether they’re expanding or facing staffing shortages, they can rely on HealthHelper to provide stability, efficiency, and sustained performance, no matter what comes next.

3. HealthHelper is expanding its capabilities beyond closing care gaps. What’s next?

We’ve got some big product enhancements coming this year that we’re really excited about. I can’t share all the details just yet, but what I can say is that our clients keep asking us the same question: ‘What other workflows can HealthHelper help us scale?’

The reality is, healthcare has no shortage of inefficiencies and operational challenges. But solving them isn’t just about building technology; it’s about earning the trust of provider organizations to take these problems off their plate. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Moving forward, HealthHelper will orchestrate and augment more of their workflows. We’ll be rolling out new solutions that allow practices and networks to quickly spin up tech-enabled workflows that scale, orchestrate, and hardwire best practices for specific patient populations. But this isn’t just technology, this includes the nimble service augmentation that actually gets the work done.

One of the biggest pain points we’re tackling is the constant changes in and impressive complexity of having to deal with a multitude of payer contracts. Every time a contract changes, practices aren’t in a position to completely overhaul their workflows for that payer’s patients. But with HealthHelper, they don’t have to. We combine technology and coordination resources to make those adjustments seamless.

Instead of spending weeks on planning, staffing, and change management, practices and networks can turn to HealthHelper to activate high-value workflows that drive performance improvements, all without having to change their own workflow, without having to worry about tech integrations, and without adding more administrative burden. We orchestrate the workflow…and we execute the work.

4. What role do AI and automation play in HealthHelper’s future?

It’s an exciting time to be in care navigation. More so than ever before, AI is allowing us to do more with fewer resources. But let’s be clear: AI isn’t here to replace providers or care teams; it’s here to amplify their impact.

At HealthHelper, we’re AI-enabling our care coordinators so that most of the patient engagement and care coordination can run on autopilot, while our team steps in when human judgment, creativity, and problem-solving are needed. Many patients want to know that there is a human there to help. HealthHelper clients learn quickly that in fact there are so many gaps and inefficiencies in healthcare that still require a real person to connect the dots, and that’s where the AI-plus-human approach becomes so powerful.

That’s also why we’re skeptical of companies claiming AI can do it all. Healthcare is complex. Data is messy. Systems don’t always talk to each other. We’ve seen firsthand that you still need people in the loop to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. That’s why our focus is on AI working alongside humans both to scale adoption of coordinator best practices and to actually take work off our clients’ plates, end to end.

5. Where do you see HealthHelper in five years?

When I think about where HealthHelper will be in five years, I think about the brand we’re building. Right now, we’re known as a trusted partner for primary care providers: an extension of their team that actually helps them get work done. That trust is everything, and it’s what sets us apart.

Five years from now, HealthHelper will still be that trusted partner, but our impact will go far beyond care gap closure. We’ll be known for orchestrating and augmenting all types of provider workflows, helping practices and health systems run more efficiently, scale operations, and do more with less.

We’ve already proven that we can seamlessly integrate into primary care teams and take work off their plates. That foundation gives us the ability to expand, taking on more administrative and operational burdens so that providers can focus on patient care. And as we grow, we’ll continue leveraging AI and automation to make our solutions even more effective and efficient.

Ultimately, I see HealthHelper becoming a critical infrastructure piece for primary care, health systems, and the networks that support them. We’ll be the go-to partner for healthcare organizations that want to scale highly effective provider workflows, powered by smart automation and deep healthcare expertise.

That’s where we’re headed, and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s next.

I didn’t start my career thinking I’d build a company. I became a primary care physician to help people: to care for patients and make a real difference in my community. My days were full but meaningful, managing medications, seeing patients back-to-back, addressing urgent issues, and keeping the practice running smoothly.

But over time, something shifted.

Increasingly, my clinical responsibilities weren’t the only thing demanding my attention. I was handed chase lists: long lists of tasks tied to closing care gaps and meeting payer performance metrics. These lists weren’t just overwhelming; they were riddled with inaccuracies and existed completely outside of my primary systems and workflows. I’d review the lists, often feeling frustrated. I knew my team and I had already discussed many of these preventive screenings and follow-ups with our patients. So why were they still appearing?

Oh yeah…patients have lives outside of my clinic, they get busy and forget. So what am I supposed to do about this? I didn’t have the staff, tools, or time to systematically tackle this extra workload.

Some of my colleagues were using ad-hoc methods. One provider handed out bright pink slips to patients reminding them to schedule their mammograms, while others made verbal reminders to “come back in six months” for a diabetes follow-up. My team and I took to making phone calls when we had a spare moment (which were few and far between). It was inconsistent, inefficient, and often ineffective.

The challenge wasn’t just closing care gaps. It was that meeting these payer requirements directly impacted our ability to succeed as a practice, yet no one had a scalable, effective way to manage it.

I knew there had to be a better way.

The Turning Point

That’s why I founded HealthHelper.

I wanted to create a solution that took the work off providers’ plates so they could focus on their patients, not on the endless administrative tasks required to perform well on payer contracts. I wanted to offer something that gave providers relief: the confidence that their practice could meet performance goals without compromising patient care. AND, it had to make it easy for patients, otherwise, it wouldn’t move the needle.

HealthHelper was built to solve exactly this problem.

We take on the work providers don’t have time for:

• We close care gaps by identifying patients overdue for preventive services and actually scheduling their care for them.

• We help you perform better on payer contracts by managing the operational lift of care coordination and patient engagement.

• We become your performance partner, ensuring you meet key performance measures while reducing staff burden.

The Impact We Strive For

Today, HealthHelper works with providers and health systems to make sure no care gap goes unaddressed. Our team handles the administrative complexity, allowing care teams to focus on what they do best.

We’re not just a technology platform or service; we’re a true partner in performance.

To my fellow providers: I see you. I know how hard you’re working. HealthHelper exists to ensure you can keep doing what you love, caring for patients, while we take care of the rest.

Let’s make healthcare better, together.

When we engage with a prospect, almost every individual within a healthcare organization, regardless of title, is a stakeholder. Many vendors lose sight of this fact and focus only on a narrow set of individuals based on their job descriptions. We don’t. We take a broader perspective, recognizing how our solutions impact various roles across the organization. For example, here’s a foundation on how we think about what we do and how it affects them:

Close Gaps in Care

CEO - You want the best for your patients and your employees while you continue to grow. Our tech-enabled services deliver concierge-focused patient engagement services. This not only enhances patient satisfaction and retention, but it also allows your clinical providers to focus on delivering care that truly makes a difference, enabling them to work at the top of their license. Providers who feel supported and have the tools they need are less likely to experience burnout or leave, fostering a stable and high-functioning clinical team.

CFO - You’re focused on the bottom line and want to ensure that partnering with HealthHelper generates a positive return on investment. Our solution drives clinical and financial success by enabling providers to concentrate on delivering care that meets the organization’s quality metrics and payer contract requirements. For multi-specialty groups, our proactive patient engagement reduces network leakage and retains patients within your system, enhancing patient loyalty and ensuring revenue capture. Across our customer base, we consistently deliver a 5X+ ROI by reducing administrative burden, retaining care, and improving outcomes.

Care Providers - You became a provider to practice medicine, not to spend your days making follow-up calls or chasing down patients. Our solution is designed to offload administrative tasks, so you can focus on delivering excellent care. We take on the burden of reaching out to patients, scheduling needed services, and ensuring they’re up-to-date on preventive and chronic care. This means fewer distractions and more time for meaningful patient interactions. Reclaim your time and focus on the work that inspired you to become a provider in the first place.

Practice Managers - Your role is to keep both your practice and your team running smoothly. Our services enable you to maximize productivity without burning out your staff. By offloading patient outreach and scheduling responsibilities to us, your practice team can prioritize higher-value tasks that keep the practice operating efficiently and effectively. You’ll notice the impact not just in workflow, but in team satisfaction and patient experience.

Risk-Bearing Entities - Whether you’re a health plan, ACO, MSO, or pay-vider, your mission is to deliver higher quality care at a lower cost. Achieving this requires closing care gaps that impact quality metrics, star ratings, and drive downstream costs. Yet, with practices already overwhelmed, it’s crucial to implement solutions that reduce, rather than add to, their workload. Our approach relieves your practices by taking on care coordination tasks and focusing on the outcomes you’re measured against. The result? Better quality scores, enhanced patient outcomes, and a stronger financial performance.

Lastly, but definitely not least, the patient. The whole reason all of us have a job. The reason we wake up every day and do what we do. When everyone in the healthcare ecosystem understands their role as a stakeholder and consistently delivers, the patient is the ultimate stakeholder and beneficiary. When they know where they need to be, when they need to be there, and why, and follow through, everyone wins. They reap the reward of happy providers, happy care providers, thought-leading CEOs, CFOs, and clinical leaders within any healthcare organization. THE PATIENT is why you succeed. THE PATIENT is why HealthHelper exists.

It’s time we look at the whole picture. Eliminate the tunnel vision, and provide solutions that benefit all stakeholders.