A collaborative agreement between Logan Health, Glacier County, and the Blackfeet Reservation is keeping some emergency services operating along the Hi-line. The agreement is a rarity and has stirred up renewed interest in the creation of healthcare consortiums to help keep critical care facilities operating in rural Montana. Listen to the podcast to hear Ryan Pitts from Logan Health, Rich Rasmussen from the Montana Hospital Association, and state Representative Geraldine Custer discuss why these types of collaborative efforts might be the future of rural health care.

As the state continues to grapple with an EMS shortage, college programs are exploring ways to expand and enhance the state’s pool of first responders.

In Montana, uncompensated care plummeted after Medicaid expansion. Employment rates went up. Expansion generated $2.1 billion in new economic activity over the first two years, one report found. Thousands of Montanans accessed primary care services — some for the first time in their lives.

Meanwhile, thousands of Wyomingites remain without health coverage, and hospitals are still writing off millions of dollars treating people who can’t afford healthcare.

Benefis Health System broke ground on what will be its largest expansion into the Helena area.

Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office estimates that “thousands of health care workers” have obtained religious exemptions and “remain in the workforce,” according to a recent press release.

Gov. Greg Gianforte is urging unvaccinated health care workers to consider using religious and medical exemptions ahead of an upcoming federal vaccine mandate deadline. Gianforte says health care workers should evaluate all their options.

How Montana’s pro-vaccine Republican governor is navigating COVID says a lot about his political priorities.

MHA has partnered with nine other trusted Montana healthcare and public health associations to launch the “Your Best Shot MT” campaign to help answer parents’ vaccine questions and increase COVID-19 vaccination rates in Montana.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Joe Biden’s administration doesn’t have the authority to impose vaccine-or-testing requirements on employers that would have covered tens of millions of Americans.

A coalition of Montana medical groups warned that hospitals are once again at risk of being extended beyond their caregiving capacity as the more transmissible omicron variant starts to spread across the state.