Federal money would put portable X-ray units in Northwest Arctic village clinics

Maniilaq Association is set to receive $218,964 in federal money to put portable X-ray units in Northwest Arctic village clinics, one of the projects the Alaska Department of Health highlighted Thursday as it closed out the first year of its Rural Health Transformation Program. The state's notice, which lists award amounts as preliminary, dates the award Aug. 21.

Maniilaq's hospital, the Maniilaq Health Center in Kotzebue, offers routine X-rays, ultrasound, mammography and CT scans. With units in village clinics, community health aides working by telehealth with providers at the Kotzebue hospital could get images on site and decide sooner whether a patient needs an emergency medical evacuation, according to the state's award notice. The project also aims to cut "expensive air travel for diagnostic imaging." The summary does not say how many clinics would get units.

Maniilaq serves 11 outlying village clinics across a 38,000-square-mile, roadless region of 8,367 residents, according to its project summaries. At an April 23 Alaska House Energy Committee hearing, Tom Atkinson, CEO of Kotzebue Electric, said people in the region's 11 other villages "have to fly from the 11 other villages to Kotzebue" before going on to Anchorage for medical appointments. Higher fuel prices could push ticket prices up so far that "people just may not be able to afford to do that," he said.

The X-ray grant is one of five first-year awards to Maniilaq, totaling about $3.8 million. The others would replace aging computers, many of which can no longer get security updates, upgrade servers and networking for electronic health records and telemedicine, modernize pharmacy service to the villages and adopt an AI tool to cut documentation work for behavioral health therapists. Maniilaq's summary says that paperwork has been cited as a driver of therapist turnover.

Two other rural providers are also set to receive money for portable X-rays. Chugachmiut is set to receive $627,180 for portable digital X-ray services at five Chugach Region clinics, where its summary says patients now travel long distances for basic imaging. Alaska News reported Aug. 18 that health aides in the region's remote villages assess possible fractures and infections without imaging. Eastern Aleutian Tribes is set to receive $116,262 for portable digital X-ray access in Nelson Lagoon.

Across the program, the department said it has awarded just under $249 million to 254 projects in the first year, out of more than $272 million the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services awarded Alaska. Nearly 1,800 letters of interest came in, and requests reached $2.5 billion, Alaska News reported Sept. 14. First-year money must be fully spent by Sept. 30, 2027, or it can be taken back by the federal government, according to the department. The program is Alaska's share of a $50 billion, five-year national initiative Congress authorized in 2025 to strengthen rural health systems.

"Now, we have an opportunity to build on that foundation, strengthen access to care and shape a system that better serves every Alaskan, no matter where they live," Health Commissioner Heidi Hedberg said in a release Thursday.

The department plans to publish a dashboard of all first-year projects by the end of the year. Applications for the next funding cycle are due Wednesday, Oct. 28, and the department expects to begin notifying applicants in December.