Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program | HRSA 19 094

Opportunity Information: Apply for HRSA 19 094

The Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies (RMOMS) Program is a grant opportunity from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is a discretionary grant (CFDA 93.912) designed specifically to strengthen maternity and obstetric care in rural communities, where patients often face long travel distances, shortages of clinicians, limited hospital services, and fragmented care across pregnancy and the postpartum period. The program is structured as a pilot effort, meaning HRSA is looking for practical, testable models that can show measurable improvements in how rural regions organize and deliver maternal health services.

At its core, RMOMS aims to improve both access to care and continuity of care for people who are planning pregnancy, currently pregnant, giving birth, and recovering postpartum. HRSA frames the program around four main goals. First, applicants are expected to build or strengthen a sustainable regional network that coordinates maternity and obstetric care across a rural area, rather than relying on isolated facilities working alone. Second, the program emphasizes increasing the availability and actual use of services across the full maternity care timeline, including preconception care, prenatal care, labor and delivery support, and postpartum follow-up. Third, RMOMS pushes applicants to develop financing approaches that can last beyond the grant period, recognizing that rural maternal health programs often struggle when temporary funding ends. Fourth, the initiative is explicitly outcomes-driven, with the intent to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes, not just expand services on paper.

A defining feature of this opportunity is that applicants must address all four RMOMS Focus Areas in a single, integrated proposal. The first focus area, Rural Hospital Obstetric Service Aggregation, centers on strategies to organize and concentrate obstetric services in ways that make sense for rural geography and patient volume, such as shared coverage arrangements, referral patterns, or partnerships that keep services available and safe. The second focus area, a Network Approach to Coordinating a Continuum of Care, is about building reliable connections among hospitals, clinics, community providers, and other partners so that patients can move smoothly from one stage of care to the next without gaps, duplication, or missed follow-up. The third focus area, Leveraging Telehealth and Specialty Care, encourages the use of telehealth and specialty support to overcome rural workforce limitations and extend access to services that may not exist locally, such as maternal-fetal medicine expertise, behavioral health support, lactation consultation, or management of high-risk pregnancies. The fourth focus area, Financial Sustainability, requires applicants to think beyond service delivery and show how the model can be paid for over time through sustainable reimbursement, payer partnerships, cost-sharing arrangements, value-based payment approaches, or other realistic financing methods.

HRSA signals that strong applications will be rooted in an established or formal regional network structure and will propose innovative but credible ways to implement the required focus areas. Applicants are also required to respond to focus-specific questions included in the full funding notice, but they are not restricted to only those questions and may include additional details that strengthen their approach. The opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number HRSA-19-094) was created March 25, 2019, with an original closing date of May 24, 2019, and HRSA anticipated making three awards. The listing shows an award ceiling of 0, which typically means the ceiling was not specified in the summary field and applicants would need to rely on the full notice for exact budget limits and expectations. Eligibility is listed broadly as "Others," with clarification provided in the full eligibility section of the funding announcement, indicating that applicants should carefully confirm whether their organization type and network partners meet HRSA requirements.

Overall, RMOMS is aimed at helping rural regions build coordinated, financially durable maternity care systems that connect patients to the right care at the right time, including higher-level services when needed, with the larger goal of reducing preventable complications and improving outcomes for mothers and newborns in rural America.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.912.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 25, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 24, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 3 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for HRSA 19 094

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