National Telehealth Centers of Excellence: Who are they and what do they do?

April 14, 2019 | 2:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CDT

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has designated two National Telehealth Centers of Excellence. These cooperative agreement awards were designed to support rigorous scientific evaluation of telehealth programs at two academic medical centers in rural states with particularly high rates of chronic disease. The designees both demonstrated long standing telehealth programs with both breadth and depth and the ability to study the outcomes of these programs in order to inform public policy and overcome barriers to widespread telehealth implementation. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has devoted its Center of Excellence Resources in year one to three main areas of study:

• The impact of telehealth on federal and local healthcare spending
• Patient and provider engagement
• Decreasing technological barriers to widespread adoption of telehealth

In year two MUSC has expanded this work plan to include an implementation science approach to evaluating telehealth program success, a menu of services to fit the needs of primary care providers and an evaluation of mental health focused programs. The University of Mississippi Medical Center Telehealth Center of Excellence has focused its year one funding on building a research infrastructure to evaluate multiple aspects of remote patient monitoring as well as the Telehealth impact on rural providers. The focus in year two has expanded to include evaluation of multiple telehealth programs including specialty telemedicine, store and forward dermatology, remote patient monitoring and education and outreach. The University of Mississippi will also be researching telehealth and community economic development. These complementary work plans and early outcomes will be discussed as well as ways that both new and experienced telehealth programs may interact and benefit from this work will be presented.

Speakers:

• Kathryn King Cristaldi, MD, MHS, Medical Director, School-Based Health, Medical University of South Carolina, Center for Telehealth
• Richard Summers, MD, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, The University of Mississippi Medical Center