Texas Border Business
DALLAS, Texas — The MolinaCares Accord (“MolinaCares”), in collaboration with Molina Healthcare of Texas (“Molina”), announced a $325,000 investment to support two Texas nonprofits focused on improving access to health care for rural Texans — the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals (TORCH) and Texas Rural HealthAssociation (TRHA).
“MolinaCares is committed to expanding access to health care in Texas, especially to those in hard-to-reach rural areas,” said Chris Coffey, plan president for Molina Healthcare of Texas. “Location should never be a barrier to receiving health care and these grants aim to bridge a gap while providing local medical staff with the resourcesrequired to deliver care where it’s most needed.”
MolinaCares provided TORCH with $250,000 to advance rural health through clinical integration, telehealth, and dataanalytics. The funding will be used to develop a plan for a scalable, interoperable rural telehealth network, expand andsupport the organization’s Clinically Integrated Network (CIN), and convene regional executive roundtables to identify and pursue specific opportunities for collaboration and identification of best practices, such as shared services andphysician credentialing.
“Texas’ primary care doctor shortage has been exacerbated by the pandemic, and our rural communities have been hit particularly hard,” said John Henderson, president and CEO of TORCH. “Telehealth is an important tool, both now and for the future of health care in rural Texas, and partners like MolinaCares make it possible for us to move the dial on rural health care by investing in programs that will ultimately make Texans healthier.”
MolinaCares also provided $75,000 to TRHA to bolster workforce training and telemedicine access through the expansion of the High School Telemedicine Technical Certificate Course. Funding will enable TRHA to bring the one-of-a-kind training program and the first telemedicine certificate training program to as many as nine high schools in the West Texas region and allow more access to young people who want to pursue a career in health care, equipping them with the tools to excel and fill gaps in the workforce.
“The development of appropriate health resources for medically underserved areas of rural Texas is critical for thefuture of our state, and this includes educational resources,” said Kelly Cheek, director of the Texas Rural Health Association. “Funding from MolinaCares will enable us to better equip the young workforce, filling critical health carejobs in rural areas and helping provide better care for our communities.”
