WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) today announced that the Administration will create a committee specifically dedicated to making sure rural communities, like those throughout North Dakota, have a stronger voice on the federal rules and regulations that impact them after she called for greater attention to rural health delivery concerns.

The move, which creates a Rural Health Council within Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), heeds Heitkamp’s call for federal practices and standards that take rural communities into account. In 2014, Heitkamp led a bipartisan group of 34 senators in expressing deep concern that the agency’s policies do not adequately reflect the reality of health delivery on the ground in rural areas. They requested that CMS pay attention to rural needs during its initial consideration of new rules and to monitor the impact of implementation on costs and access to care.

Designed to improve access to health care in rural areas in a way that accounts for the unique delivery and economic needs of these communities, the Rural Health Council will aim to make sure new health care policies appropriately fit in rural markets. Heitkamp, a leader in the Senate Rural Health Caucus, will continue to work with CMS to make sure the agency prioritizes the needs of rural communities when rules are being written, rather than considering them as an afterthought.

“Families in small and rural towns know how difficult it can be to access the health care resources they need – especially in a system that’s often not designed with them in mind,” said Heitkamp. “There is no good reason why our growing elderly population or our veterans in rural communities can’t receive accessible basic health care, and that’s exactly the issue I raised in 2014 when I brought together 34 Republican and Democratic senators to demand rural health providers have a seat at the table so that federal agencies can better understand what rural health delivery really looks like on the ground. This new creation of a Rural Health Council is a positive step toward making sure the health care needs of rural America are no longer an afterthought.”

Heitkamp has long supported improved access to health care for rural communities in North Dakota and across the country. Last February, Heitkamp supported two bills that would make sure current regulations don’t place undue burdens on rural health care facilities or families and, as a result, better support individuals and families living in rural communities.

Heitkamp has pushed to make sure patients get the care they need at any one of North Dakota’s 36 Critical Access Hospitals – which provide emergency care in rural areas – and that health providers are paid for the care they provide. By helping introduce the Critical Access Relief Act, Heitkamp worked to undo a CMS rule requiring Critical Access Hospitals physicians to predict and certify that a patient will be discharged or transferred to another hospital within 96 hours after admission. Heitkamp also promoted commonsense flexibility for rural patients and their health providers – which don’t always have the time or budget to be present during outpatient services, by supporting Protecting Access to Rural Therapy Services (PARTS) Act, which would instead allow outpatient therapeutic services to be rendered without requiring the supervising physician to be physically present.

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