Healthy Hometowns Centers of Excellence — Medical Equipment
Iowa
Eligible Entity Types
Funding
Tribal Provisions
No tribal set-aside or tribal-specific track has been identified in Iowa's RHTP program materials. Iowa has one federally recognized tribal entity — the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa (Meskwaki Nation), which operates the Meskwaki Health Clinic in Tama County. Whether the Meskwaki Health Clinic was eligible under RFP #PHTHORC26009 and whether it applied is not confirmed.
Application Guide
RFP #PHTHORC26009 distributed $66 million for medical equipment purchases under Iowa's Healthy Hometowns "Centers of Excellence" initiative — the single largest first-year RHTP solicitation in the nation. The program funded high-cost diagnostic and surgical equipment that individual rural hospitals could not finance independently: MRI systems, CT scanners, PET/CT imaging, and robotic surgical systems. The equipment awards were designed to transform rural Iowa hospitals into technology-capable Centers of Excellence capable of delivering advanced diagnostics and surgery without requiring rural patients to travel to urban centers.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds announced the award intention on January 30, 2026 — 32 days after CMS announced Iowa's $209 million RHTP award, and faster than any other state in the nation. Iowa's ability to move this quickly reflected a deliberate pre-award strategy: Iowa HHS drafted and released RFPs for its top two initiatives in parallel with the CMS application process.
Eligible entities for RFP #PHTHORC26009 have not been confirmed from the RFP text. Based on the Centers of Excellence program design and the equipment types funded, eligible applicants likely included Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), rural hospitals (non-CAH), and rural health systems with acute care facilities. FQHCs and rural health clinics may have been eligible for diagnostic equipment appropriate to their scope of practice, but this is not confirmed from available materials.
Total available: $66,000,000 (Year 1). Per-award range: Not confirmed from available materials. Number of awards: Not confirmed. Match required: None indicated. Award status: Awarded — January 30, 2026 (Notice of Intent to Award announced by Governor).
Award status: AWARDED January 30, 2026. RFP number: PHTHORC26009. Initiative: Healthy Hometowns — Centers of Excellence. Iowa HHS RHTP page: hhs.iowa.gov/initiatives/rural-health-transformation-rht. Iowa was the first state nationally to award RHTP sub-grant funding. Remaining Iowa RHTP programs (~$130M in Year 1) will be solicited via separate RFPs on a rolling basis.