The Access Revolution Hidden in FinTech

If you spent the last month scrolling through LinkedIn or attending health tech mixers, you would be forgiven for thinking the only thing happening in healthcare right now is the deployment of autonomous AI agents. The hype cycle has fully pivoted from "AI as a tool" to "AI as a replacement," with endless pitch decks promising to automate everything from revenue cycle management to patient triage. But while the venture world is looking at the stars, the federal government is pouring concrete. The most significant news in health technology this month didn’t come from a product launch in the valley. It came from a bureaucratic filing deadline in Washington, D.C., where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) confirmed that states have overwhelmingly bought into the new wave of rural health funding. We are witnessing the quiet launch of what I call the "Anti-AI Stimulus." While the industry obsesses over Large Language Models (LLMs), the checkbooks for 2026 are opening for something far less sexy but far more critical: basic infrastructure. We are seeing a convergence of major funding streams, most notably the CMS AHEAD Model and the rapid expansion of Rural Emergency Hospital (REH) designations, that signal a massive shift in how care is delivered outside of major cities. For the founders, investors, and strategists reading this: ignore this shift at your own peril. The smart money isn't chasing chatbots; it is chasing the plumbing that makes modern medicine possible. The Policy Shift: From Volume to Value (Finally) To understand where the money is going, you have to understand the problem the government is trying to solve. The rural hospital business model is broken. Recent data from The Chartis Group indicates that 50 percent of rural hospitals are operating in the red. They cannot survive on fee-for-service medicine because they simply do not have the volume. The government’s response, through programs like the AHEAD Model, is to move states toward "global budgets." In plain English, this means paying hospitals a fixed amount to keep a specific population healthy, rather than paying them for every MRI and surgery they perform. This is a radical reimagination of the financial incentives. When a hospital is paid a flat fee, keeping a patient out of the hospital becomes profitable.....but it also sounds like 'pop health', or 'at risk' models?! This changes the technology wishlist overnight. If you are a hospital CEO under a global budget, you don't need a robot that does surgery faster. You need a remote monitoring platform that prevents the patient from needing surgery in the first place. You need data interoperability that actually works. You need the "boring" stuff. The Conflict: A Turf War for Survival There is a tension inherent in this funding that few are talking about. It is effectively a battle over the definition of "rural healthcare" and who controls the purse strings. On one side, you have the Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) and independent rural clinics. Their argument is straightforward: they are the physical lifelines in these communities. They view this capital as survival money intended to fix leaking roofs, update 15-year-old servers, and keep the emergency room lights on. On the other side, you have the large academic medical centers in larger cities. Their argument is equally compelling: because rural facilities often lack specialized capabilities, the complex cases are transferred to the city. They rgue that they are the de facto safety net for the rural population and deserve a cut of the funding to maintain the "mothership" capacity. This isn’t just improved accounting; it is a fundamental strategic conflict. Is the goal to treat patients where they live, or to build better highways to the city? The Technology Implications: The "Unsexy" Thesis This is where the rubber meets the road for the health tech community. If you read the specific language in the Notice of Funding Opportunities related to these rural initiatives, the focus is on "sustainable access" and "technology-enabled solutions." If you are pitching a generative AI copilot that costs $100 per seat, you are likely barking up the wrong tree. The winners of these contracts will not be the companies selling "optimization." They will be the companies selling "foundation." 1. Cybersecurity is the Priority We cannot ignore the reality that rural hospitals are currently the softest targets for ransomware. They are often running legacy software on deprecated operating systems, think Windows 7 or even XP running on MRI machines (a gross over exaggeration but you get the point), because they lack the IT budget to upgrade. When a rural hospital gets hacked, patients get diverted, and people die. A significant portion of this new funding will go strictly toward cybersecurity hardening. It is not exciting. It will not make for a viral TechCrunch headline. But it is the prerequisite for everything else. 2. The Death of the "AI vs. Broadband" Debate We love to talk about AI diagnostics in remote clinics, but those conversations are theoretical if the clinic has a shaky DSL connection that drops every time it rains. The USDA’s ReConnect Program and similar initiatives are acknowledging that "digital health" is impossible without "digital access." Expect massive spending on "plumbing"; high-speed satellite links, secure data backbones, and reliable telehealth endpoints . You cannot deploy the future of medicine on 1990s infrastructure. 3. Workforce Extension, Not Replacement The most viable "tech" play here is not replacing doctors, but extending the few we have left. Rural America is facing a massive shortage of specialists. We do not need AI to be the doctor; we need technology that allows one intensivist in a city to monitor patients across ten different rural ICUs simultaneously. Tools that facilitate this "one-to-many" care model, like virtual nursing or e-ICU platforms , will find immediate product-market fit. The goal is leverage. The Borderless Reality As I wrote in The Borderless Healthcare Revolution, the concept of "borderless" care isn't limited to medical tourism or crossing international lines. The most difficult borders to cross are often the invisible ones within our own country: the county lines that separate a well-funded university hospital from a struggling rural clinic. Technology has the power to erase those borders, but only if we invest in the right kind of technology. The "hype" cycle tells us that the future is an AI agent that can diagnose a rare disease in seconds. The "reality" cycle, fueled by federal dollars and actual clinical need, suggests the future is a rural hospital that doesn't get hacked, has a stable internet connection, and can access a specialist without putting a patient in an ambulance for a three-hour drive in the snow. If you are building for that future, 2026 is going to be a very good year. #StayCrispy -Dr. Matt 

I get this a lot. When I talk about the future of healthcare, people are energized. But when I pivot to AI, the mood shifts. People are "freaking out." I was speaking on this topic the other day, and a respected physician came up to me and said, “I am so glad I’m retired!” He’s not wrong to feel that way. The noise is deafening. We’re all being hit from two sides, and it's enough to make anyone feel paralyzed. The Two Extremes (And Why They're Both Wrong) On one side, there's the AI Hype . This is the utopian promise. You’ve seen the vendors. You’ve read the headlines. AI will read every scan instantly, end diagnostic errors, write all our notes, eliminate clinician burnout, and solve our staffing crisis by next quarter. It’s the magic wand we've been waiting for. On the other side, there's the AI Hysteria . This is the dystopian warning. AI is a black box trained on biased data. It will amplify systemic inequities. It will replace our best clinicians. Hackers will cripple our systems. And insurance companies are already using it as a weapon to deny care at a scale we’ve never seen before. No wonder that doctor is glad he’s retired. No wonder we feel paralyzed. The Sober Reality: AI is a Mirror Here is the reality. AI is not magic. It's math. It is a powerful tool. And a tool is only as good as the system we put it into. Here is the single most important thing I can tell you today: AI does not fix a broken system. It just scales the broken parts faster. But here’s the part we're missing: AI is a mirror. It's not inventing bias; it's just exposing the bias that's been in our data for decades. It's not creating interoperability problems; it's just shining a harsh light on our absurd reliance on the fax machine. It's not creating new financial barriers; it's just automating the ones that already exist. This isn't a catastrophe. It's a diagnostic. AI is showing us, with data, exactly where the cracks in our system are. And that is not a reason to be paralyzed. That is a reason to be focused. A Practical Path Forward We are leaders, clinicians, technologists, and more. Here is how we move from paralysis to action. Start with Problems, Not Platforms. We must have the discipline to reject "shiny object syndrome." The conversation needs to change. Instead of a random sales guy asking, "Do you want to buy an AI platform?" we need to be clear: "Show me how you will reduce my nurse's documentation time by 30%." "Show me how you will get my sepsis patients their antibiotics 15 minutes sooner." We start with the problem, not the tech. Govern What You've Got. We must be the ones to audit the data, asking before we buy a tool, "Who is not in your training set?" We must also consider when to keep a human in the loop, empowered to overrule the algorithm, or when it's not necessary. Invest in the "Boring" Stuff. AI doesn't work in a vacuum. It needs the boring infrastructure: the broadband in our rural counties, the interoperability between our EHRs. It needs payment models that reward using AI for prevention, not just for billing. And it needs us to design for trust; which means bringing patients, community leaders, and our frontline care teams into the room before we buy the tool. Teach How to Use It. We are responsible for creating the next generation of healthcare professionals: the nurses, the PAs, the therapists, the coders, and the physicians. We have a mandate to make AI literacy a core competency. This is not as simple as handing someone a new app. A striking JAMA study highlighted this very gap. It found that AI, used alone, actually outperformed both physicians working alone and physicians who were given the AI tool to help. What does that tell us? It tells us that this is a complex, learned skill. Simply giving a clinician a powerful AI doesn't guarantee a better outcome. We have to train our teams how to use it, when to trust it, and when to overrule it. They can't just learn to use AI; they must learn to effectively partner with it. The Bottom Line The goal of AI is not to be intelligent. The goal is to be useful. The goal is to be safe. The goal is to restore the human connection that technology so often breaks. The future of healthcare is not about replacing our clinicians with algorithms. It's about augmenting our care teams. It's about giving them the tools and the time to do what only humans can do: listen, show empathy, and heal. The future isn’t about intelligence without borders. It’s about building a system that delivers humanity, to everyone, without barriers. Stay grounded. #StayCrispy -Dr. Matt