Assistance program
Small Rural Hospital Improvement Grant Program
$323.0 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Health Resources and Services Administration, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.301
- What it does
- The Small Rural Hospital Improvement Program supports eligible small rural hospitals in meeting value-based payment and care goals for their respective organizations through purchases of hardware, software, and training.
- Who benefits
- Small rural hospitals must meet the following eligibility requirements in order to be eligible for SHIP funds: 1) “eligible small rural hospital†is defined as a non-federal, short-term general acute care hospital that: (i) is located in a rural area as defined in 42 U.S.C. 1395ww(d) and (ii) has 49 available beds or fewer, as reported on the hospital’s most recently filed Medicare Cost Report; 2) “rural area†is defined as either: (1) located outside of a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA); (2) located within a rural census tract of a MSA, as determined under the Goldsmith Modification or the Rural Urban Commuting Areas (RUCAs) or (3) is being treated as if being located in a rural area pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1395ww(d)(8)(E); and, 3) Eligible small rural hospitals may be for-profit or not-for-profit, including faith-based. Hospitals in U.S. territories as well as tribally operated hospitals under Titles I and V of P.L. 93-638 are eligible to the extent that such hospitals meet the above criteria.
- Who applies
- The State Office of Rural Health (SORH) will be the official award recipient acting as fiscal intermediary for all eligible hospitals within its state. Each SORH will be charged with organizing the distribution of funds to eligible hospitals. Eligible hospitals within the territories that do not have access to a SORH apply to the SHIP program individually. Tribally operated hospitals under Titles I and V of P.L. 93-638 are eligible to apply.
- Authorized by
- Section 1820(g) (3) (F) (ii) (I) of Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395i-4 (g) (3), as amended by Section 3129 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), P.L. 111-148.
- Program site
- http://www.hrsa.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments