Sofi Gratas covers rural health and health care for GPB. She joined GPB in June 2022 as a Report for America Corps member. Based in Macon, her coverage area includes Middle and South Georgia. Her focus is on the crisis facing rural communities that consistently rank near the bottom nationwide in health and health care. Sofi is a 2020 graduate of the University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism. Prior to joining GPB, she worked at the Red and Black and WUGA.
Georgia is one of 30 states that was flagged by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services late last month for its improper handling of automatic renewals, as the state continues to reevaluate eligibility under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities is partnering with a Macon-based provider to open a health care center specifically for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDD.
By converting to a Rural Emergency Hospital, existing rural hospitals commit to changing their model of care, with a focus on emergency medicine, in exchange for subsidies from the federal government.
Despite limited state funding, sheriffs in central Georgia are planning a multi-county co-response program, the first of its kind in the region, to address what they call a crisis-level need.
