Telehealth Virtual Resource Center – Funding Opportunities

The Office for the Advancement of Telehealth (OAT) promotes the use of telehealth technologies for health care delivery, education, and health information services.
Telehealth is especially critical in rural and other remote areas that lack sufficient health care services, including specialty care.

The range and use of telehealth services have expanded over the past decades, along with the role of technology in improving and coordinating care. Traditional models of telehealth involve care delivered to a patient at an originating (or spoke) site from a specialist working at a distant (or hub) site. A telehealth network consists of a series of originating sites receiving services from a collaborating distant site.

Telehealth is defined as the use of electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration. Technologies include video conferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications.

OAT provides funds to promote and improve telehealth services in rural areas, including:

Active Programs

Telehealth Network Grant Program (TNGP)

The purpose of this program is to demonstrate the use of telehealth networks to improve healthcare services for medically underserved populations in urban, rural, and frontier communities. More specifically, the networks can be used to:

Expand access to, coordinate, and improve the quality of health care services;
Improve and expand the training of health care providers; and/or
Expand and improve the quality of health information available to health care providers, patients, and their families.

The current TNGP encourages telehealth services delivered through school-based health centers/clinics (SBHC), particularly those serving high-poverty populations.

Contact: Carlos Mena, 301-443-3198

Substance Abuse Treatment Telehealth Network Grant Program (SAT TNGP)

Evidence-Based Tele-Behavioral Health Network Program (EB THNP)

The purpose of this program is to use telehealth networks to:

Increase access to behavioral health care services in rural and frontier communities and
Conduct evaluations of those efforts to establish an evidence-base for assessing the effectiveness of tele-behavioral health care for patients, providers, and payers.

Contact: Whitney Wiggins, 301-443-4966

Telehealth Resource Center Program (TRC)

Telehealth Centers of Excellence (COE)

Flex Rural Veterans Health Access Program (RVHAP)

Licensure Portability Grant Program (LPGP)

Telehealth Focused Rural Health Research Center Cooperative Agreement

Programs in Closeout

Evidence-Based Tele-Emergency Network Grant Program (EB TNGP)

Rural Child Poverty Telehealth Network Grant Program

Resources for Telehealth

Funding Opportunities: Telehealth can be an important tool for improving access to quality health care, especially for underserved and economically or medically vulnerable populations. Applicants who propose a telehealth component to their work plan are encouraged to reach out to one of the 12 HRSA-supported Regional Telehealth Resource Centers , which provide technical assistance to organizations and individuals who are actively providing or interested in providing telehealth services to rural and/or underserved communities.

Telehealth Resource Centers (TRCs) FORHP supports TRCs, which provide assistance, education and information to organizations and individuals who are actively providing or interested in providing medical care in remote areas.

Profiles of OAT Grantees 2018. (PDF – 3.6 MB) These profiles provide an overview of the 57 telehealth and telemedicine projects administered during this period.

The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment is a FORHP-commissioned report from the Institutes of Medicine on how telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system.

Source: Health Resources and Services Administration