Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced Friday the allocation of $11 million in federal Rural Health Transformation funding to support mobile and telehealth emergency medical services for rural Granite Staters. The grant is a part of a previously awarded $204 million in 2025.
Kennedy explained that the funding will expand New Hampshire’s Mobile Integrated Health program and bolster telemedicine in rural parts of the state — two interventions he said will reduce strain on overburdened emergency rooms.
“This will provide mobile technology, telehealth and worker retention and training to allow a lot of procedures — primary care procedures, respiratory procedures, chronic allergy and pulmonary issues and also childbirth — to be done at homes, but those patients don’t have to go to a hospital, and that is going to benefit the whole system,” Kennedy said in a press conference at the New Hampshire Fire Academy and EMS Resource Center in Concord. “It’s going to take the stress off the emergency rooms, and free up emergency services for people who need acute care.”
As for telehealth, Kennedy said, “One of the purposes of [the program] is to equip the EMS teams with telehealth capacity, so that they’re connected to the hospital here in Concord. And the doctors at that hospital can advise them about how to do certain procedures at home, [so] that patient will never have to go to the emergency room.”
Kennedy stood alongside New Hampshire Fire Standards and Training & EMS Director Mark Wholey and Donnalee Lozeau, the director of a state initiative called GO-NORTH, which Gov. Kelly Ayotte established to oversee the RHT program at the state level in New Hampshire.
According to Wholey, the funding will allow the state to add five Mobile Integrated Health programs and better meet patient needs. “The amount of impact that that’s going to have is significant,” Wholey said.