Eighty-five primary care practices in Rhode Island have received a $6.7 million boost from Gov. Dan McKee’s administration, with some practices receiving over $200,000 for recruiting new doctors and accepting new patients.
Providers who saw some of the biggest boosts from the grants, which were made public last week, included all three of Thundermist Health Center’s locations. Thundermist’s awards ranged from $193,500 to $262,125, the highest overall grant in the batch. Other big grants include $257,625 for Care New England Coventry; $251,625 for Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, $250,500 for Wood River Health in Hope Valley and $212,625 for Brown Health’s Cranston location.
The grants, which are being managed by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), opened for applications shortly after an April 29 press conference outlining McKee’s initiatives to repair the state’s ailing primary care infrastructure. At that press conference, state health officials said there were about 520 primary care providers in the Ocean State. The state would need about 300 more doctors to adequately cover the population, according to recent analysis of the All Payer Claims Database by Brown University researchers.
“Primary care is the foundation of preventive care and overall positive health outcomes,” Richard Charest, EOHHS secretary, said in a June 18 statement. “These grants will support 85 primary care practices in Rhode Island to expand their practices so they can see more patients, which, in turn, will ease the burden on Rhode Islanders seeking access to primary care.”
The grants are divided into three tiers. Applications for grants closed on May 16. The first tier grants went up to $75,000 and were available to practices that accepted between 25 and 75 new patients, depending on the practice size. Providers have until Oct. 31 to reach target numbers for newly enrolled patients.
Tier two provides up to $300,000 for practices that recruit new primary care doctors, or established physicians who worked at now-closed practices. Practices have to document the hires and use of funds by year’s end.
Grants for the third tier required that practices enroll as new Medicaid providers in Rhode Island by Sept. 1. Tier three grants have not yet been announced and will be approved on a rolling basis, because the state needs time to verify a provider’s enrollment. The state has allotted a maximum of $100,000 for grants in this tier.
McKee said in a statement that the grants are “central” to his administration’s goal of “building a healthier state for all” by 2030, alongside efforts to accelerate a review of the Medicaid rates paid to providers, require insurers to spend more on primary care reimbursement, ease prior authorization rules, and expand student loan forgiveness for primary care doctors.
The grants arrived the same week the General Assembly passed the state’s fiscal year 2026 budget, which begins July 1. The budget also includes a strong emphasis on primary care by allocating $45 million toward providers, with $26 million of that infusion meant to raise Medicaid reimbursement rates by Oct. 1.
Low reimbursement rates for primary care doctors and an aging workforce of physicians have been cited as major contributors to the state’s primary care crisis. The closure of Anchor Medical Associates’ three offices — announced in April and to be finalized by June 30 — was another blow to general practitioners, leaving about 25,000 patients without a primary doctor.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
