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Tuesday April 11, 2023  |  Luke Marinac

Everything You Need to Know About Rural Emergency Hospitals (REH)

Rural hospitals play a crucial role in providing healthcare services to over 60 million Americans. However, they face unique challenges due to limited resources, inadequate staffing, and dwindling revenue.

As a result, many of these facilities are struggling to stay operational. Since 2010, 134 rural hospitals have closed, leaving millions without access to necessary medical care.

While these financial setbacks can seem insurmountable, rural hospitals don’t have to accept closing the doors on their communities. At MEDHOST, we have been serving rural and community healthcare providers for over 35 years. We’ve worked with hundreds of hospitals to improve financials, expand healthcare services, and keep America’s heartland healthy.

In this blog, we cover the Rural Emergency Hospital (REH), a new federal provider designation option for healthcare leadership at qualified facilities to consider.

Rural Emergency Hospitals (REH)

To address the growing health disparities among rural populations, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 established the Rural Emergency Hospital (REH) designation.

The REH designation is intended to give rural healthcare facilities the financial support they need to continue providing emergency services, maintain critical outpatient care access, and enhance patient outcomes.

What are the Benefits of Becoming an REH?

The new CMS REH designation provides various benefits for rural healthcare providers. These include an additional 5% payment for covered outpatient department services and a monthly facility payment based on federal rates for inpatient care.

Moreover, rural hospitals that opt for REH designation can retain their healthcare providers by offering a wider range of services. This, in turn, benefits patients by reducing the need for transfers to larger hospitals, thus lowering the risk of complications.

How a Technology Partnership with MEDHOST Can Help

We understand that rural hospitals face a number of complex challenges, and our Rural Emergency Hospital packaged solution is designed to give struggling facilities the tools they need to meet REH designation requirements, improve their overall performance, and provide high-quality healthcare to their communities.

This offering includes comprehensive support services, cloud-based hosting, and enterprise solutions to help rural providers meet regulatory milestones and maximize their federal benefits.

Outsourcing Services

Our MEDTEAM Outsourcing Services can help facilities streamline revenue cycle operations, optimize health IT systems, and ensure patient data security. In addition, MEDHOST Direct delivers all of our solutions from a world-class data center, reducing the total cost of technology ownership and ensuring patient data is safe, secure, and available to care teams.

Emergency Department Optimization

MEDHOST EDIS, our flagship emergency department system, organizes real-time patient statuses via an industry-leading tracker board while supporting fast and efficient workflows.

Designed by physicians and nurses, EDIS helps providers avoid data overload and focus on improving patient outcomes by eliminating drop-down menus, unnecessary screens, confusing dialogue boxes, and excessive keystrokes.

Maximizing Federal Benefit

Our enterprise solutions, collectively known as MEDHOST Enterprise Financial and Patient Accounting, support every touchpoint between your practice and the community it serves. From front-end registration, coding, and automated charge capture, to discharge, transfer, and revenue cycle billing processes, our digital front-door solutions ensure an outstanding patient experience.

We also provide additional services such as diagnostics orders for ED patients, assisting with medication orders, connecting community clinics for outpatient diagnostic orders, and much more.

Read the complete brochure here.


At MEDHOST, we are dedicated to helping rural healthcare providers overcome the challenges they face in providing healthcare services to their communities. With our REH conversion solution, we can help rural hospitals stay open, retain providers, and provide quality care to their patients.

Contact us today at 1.800.383.6278 or email us at inquiries@medhost.com to learn more about our Rural Emergency Hospital Package.

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