This is a weird article / statement. RICE, afaik (former doctor here), was never about prolonged use for healing. The intent is to mitigate the harms of the initial excessive inflammation/swelling response (which threatens to compromise tissue at the peak of the injury event), by dampening this response via cooling / constriction of blood vessels.

But, absolutely, after this has settled a bit, you're supposed to apply warmth, not heat, to encourage increased perfusion to the area and promote healing.

So, apples/oranges. There's nothing in the statement above to say that RICE is contraindicated as an initial management, and the implication that RICE was meant to be applied past initial management simply isn't true in the first place (afaik).

I could be wrong as to how others used it, however. I wouldn't put it past a hospital to mindlessly make it a protocol that would then be followed blindly, I guess...