Faced with ongoing financial pressures, four rural Connecticut hospitals will receive nearly $50 million to support their operations in a tough fiscal environment.
The hospitals are receiving the money under a federal law that set aside $50 billion nationwide for rural hospitals, which face particularly difficult problems with low Medicaid reimbursements and a small pool of patients in low-populated areas.
Gov. Ned Lamont and other officials said Wednesday that the grants will include $20 million for Day Kimball Hospital in Putnam, $13 million for Sharon Hospital in northwestern Litchfield County, and $12.65 million for Hartford HealthCare’s Windham Hospital in Willimantic and Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington. The grant also includes nearly $4 million for Mathematica, a consulting company that will work closely with the hospitals on data and technical assistance to improve efficiency.
Among the key improvements will be a mobile stroke unit that will be operated by Hartford HealthCare in an upscale ambulance. With a mobile CT scanner, the ambulance is expected to cost an estimated $1.7 million to $2 million and will be able to reach stroke victims quickly with highly specialized equipment that is not available in the average ambulance, officials said. Staffing costs would be additional for highly trained workers in the stroke unit.
The mobile unit is important because stroke victims need to be treated as soon as possible in order to have the best health outcomes, and the patients in rural areas are further away from the hospital than those in urban centers.
The state Department of Social Services allocated the money to the hospitals after Connecticut received a federal grant that was available for hospitals in all 50 states. While the program is slated to last for five years, the funding totals were announced only for the first year.
Working with others on a team, the efforts were overseen by Dan Sinclair, the project director for the Rural Health Transformation Program at the social services department.
The money came from President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was both praised and criticized by lawmakers as a highly controversial measure that was passed last year.
“We’re a small state, and many people don’t consider Connecticut to be a rural state,” Sinclair told The Courant in an interview. “But that’s not the right assertion. We definitely have very rural areas, and we’re happy with that amount of funding for year one. … It’s unclear as to how much we’ll get year to year. But we hope to get at least that same amount for year two.”
He added, “I’m really optimistic that we will be getting at least the same amount of resources because I feel we have made such progress as a state. Depending on what that looks like, we’ll have to evaluate our options at that moment.”
Among other costs, some of the money will be used to recruit and retain doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and behavioral health experts. Recruitment can be difficult in rural areas as some doctors and nurses prefer to work at large hospitals in New Haven and Hartford.
The hospital funding is part of an overall grant of $154 million that will be divided among 10 state government agencies for 30 different projects for workforce, data and technology, among others.
The move to help the hospitals drew bipartisan support.
“It’s a prescription for progress that I’ve been working for,” said Sen. Jeff Gordon, a Woodstock Republican who is a medical doctor and co-chairs the legislature’s rural caucus. “This funding – which Senate Republicans advocated for – will improve health care access in rural Connecticut. It can help bolster recruitment and retention of healthcare workers, and it can strengthen opioid addiction services. But there’s more to do.”
Day Kimball
In an era of hospital mega-mergers, Day Kimball Hospital has been an anomaly.
The small, independent, rural, community hospital has only 104 beds in Connecticut’s northeastern corner in Putnam, just three miles from the Rhode Island border.
“We chose Day Kimball as our top priority hospital because it’s the only independent rural hospital in the state,” Sinclair said.
Now, after a failed merger in recent years, Day Kimball will be partnering with the UConn Health Center in a broader coalition with two other smaller hospitals in Waterbury and Bristol. Health care officials nationwide say the only way for survival in 2026 and beyond is for tiny hospitals to join up with much larger networks.
For years, Day Kimball has been operating as a standalone entity, struggling to balance its budget. The hospital’s financial problems were highlighted in public records released in July 2025 by the state tax department, which showed that the hospital owed more than $40 million in back taxes.
Lamont said at the time that the state needed to step forward to help the rural hospitals.
“They’re at some stress,” Lamont responded. “There is no question about it. Some of these smaller, independent hospitals are in an awful lot of stress.”
In addition to its ongoing financial challenges, Day Kimball is facing a new challenge as Medicaid cuts under President Donald J. Trump are expected to disproportionately impact small, rural hospitals.
The hospital’s chief executive officer for the past six years, Kyle Kramer, joined with top state budget officials in writing an application in the hopes of obtaining critically needed funds to keep the hospital running. Despite the obstacles, Kramer expressed optimism before the application that the hospital would keep running.
“We’ve been here 131 years, and our intention is to be here for another 131 years,” Kramer told The Courant.
Founded in 1894, Day Kimball is based on Route 44 in rural Putnam, which has a population of fewer than 10,000 residents, though the hospital covers a broader area of 125,000 residents. Two of the closest major hospitals are in Hartford at 45 miles away and Springfield, Mass., at 54 miles away. Patients also head to hospitals in Worcester, Southbridge, Willimantic, and Norwich. If Day Kimball ever closed, its departure would create a gigantic hole in the health care system in the state’s quiet corner, affecting small towns that stretch to the Massachusetts and Rhode Island borders.
While there are no immediate concerns about closure, Kramer has said that any potential shutdown of Day Kimball would have a massive impact on the region because the hospital is the largest employer by far in an area with many elderly patients with lower incomes.
A closure would prompt numerous well-paid doctors and nurses to move out of the area with their families, hurting the local tax base and reducing the number of students in the schools.