Government
Funding for
Telehealth or Telemedicine
Part 1: Funding Sources
By
Judith Broadhurst
Note:
Part 2, Program Development and Grant Proposal Tips from HRSA, will
be available here in November 2002
Much
of what presenters said on the third day of the four-day Telehealth
2002 teleconference sponsored by the Association of Telehealth Service
Providers (ATSP) was pretty discouraging: Telehealth implementation is
moving very slowly, funding is hard to find. That's no surprise.
But
there were useful tips and encouraging words in the session on government
grants by Dena S. Puskin,
Sc.D. and Amy Barkin, MSW,
MPH of the US Health Resources and Services Administration. They
sounded like they truly want to help more organizations get telehealth
or telemedicine funding. "If you have questions about a program or concept,
call us. We can help you find a way to make it fit," they said.
Grants
for mental health and dermatology consultation in rural areas have been
the most prevalent so far, because there are so few providers of those
services in rural areas. Rehabilitation services and home care are growing,
though.
New funding program coming in December
Once
you get a grant from the Office
for the Advancement of Telehealth (OAT), they added, you remain
eligible, and it's easier to get subsequent grants. In December, OAT will
announce a new funding program that gives them more flexibility in the
kinds of programs they can fund. They'll post information about it on
their Web site by December 17th, and grant applications will be due March
17, 2003.
Bear
in mind this advice from Puskin, though: "The states allocate most of
the federal dollars, so it's really at the state level that you need to
get involved."
Think
beyond sole source and single purpose
You've
got to get creative, and think "mix and match." You may get the equipment
from one source, the connection time from another, the staff from yet
another. "Review each other's grants from other federal agencies," says
Barkin. "We all share information, and sometimes we can say [to their
counterparts in other federal agencies], 'I'll fund this if you'll fund
that.' So you may be able to get parts of funding from several agencies."
Also,
don't limit yourself to grants labeled "telehealth" or "telemedicine"
nor to looking for funding just from OAT, they advised. Congress may allocate
money through the Office of Homeland Defense, for instance. In addition
to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees
the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth and their Rural
Telemedicine Grant Program, many federal agencies fund programs
that involve telehealth or telemedicine, including these agencies (links
are to their grant information pages):
Area
Health Education Centers (AHEC) Grants, part of Health and Human
Services (HHS)
Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Department
of Commerce, Office
of Telecommunications and Information Applications
Department
of Defense, Office
of Homeland Security (biodefense and other key words)
Department
of Education
National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
National
Institutes of Health (NIH)
National
Library of Medicine (NLM)
Nursing
Informatics, funded by the National Library of Medicine (NLM)
and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)
Office
of Rural Health Policy's Rural
Hospital Flexibility Grant Program in the Health Resources and
Services Administration, but check your state's program.
Rural
Utilities Service (RUS), Distance
Learning and Telemedicine Program
Other Resources
Government
Grant Funding: Show Me the Money (slides from Puskin and Barkin's
Telehealth 2002 presentation)
FirstGov,
a good place to start searching
Federal
Commons, Grants by Topic
HHS
GrantsNet
State Rural
Hospital Flexibility Program Tracking Web Site
2001
Telemedicine Report to Congress
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