The purpose the Rural Health Network Development Planning Program (“Network Planning Program”) is to plan and develop integrated health care networks that collaborate to address the following legislative aims: (i) achieve efficiencies; (ii) expand access to and improve the quality of basic health care services and health outcomes; and (iii) strengthen the rural health care system.

This program supports one year of planning and brings together members of the health care delivery system, particularly those entities that may not have collaborated in the past, to establish and/or improve local capacity in order to strengthen rural community health interventions and enhance care coordination.

The Network Planning program uses the concept of developing networks as a strategy toward linking rural health care network members together to address local challenges, and help rural stakeholders achieve greater collective capacity to overcome challenges related to limited economies of scale for individual hospitals, clinics, or other key rural health care stakeholders.