Rural Health Sustainability Act of 2025

This bill updates who can qualify as a Rural Emergency Hospital under Medicare. It changes the cutoff date used to check a hospital’s past status to January 1, 2014, and it lets hospitals count as “rural” if they were designated as rural by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy at the Health Resources and Services Administration. These changes are meant to make it easier for certain rural facilities to be recognized and keep offering emergency and outpatient care in their communities .

• Key points:
  • Who is affected: Rural hospitals that want to qualify as Rural Emergency Hospitals under Medicare .
  • What changes: The law would use January 1, 2014 as the look‑back date, and it would accept the federal rural designation from the Office of Rural Health Policy as a qualifying factor .
  • When: The text amends the Social Security Act; a specific start date beyond this change isn’t stated in the provided text .