The FCC is continuing its support for telehealth with 62 more awards for $23.2 million for organizations seeking funding through the CARES Act, which was passed in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So far, the bureau has awarded $128.23 million of the $200 million made available for the program in the act. The awards – which seek to support both rural and urban initiatives – are in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
Organizations in the 11th approval announcement are in 29 states. States with multiple approvals are California (six approvals); New York and New Jersey (five each); Florida, Washington and Pennsylvania (four each); Ohio and Colorado (three each) and Oregon, Illinois, Michigan, Texas and Kentucky (two each).
As usual, there was a wide gap in the approvals. At the top of the list of FCC telehealth awards were five entities at or near the $1 million mark:
- Baptist Hospital of Miami (Miami) was awarded $1,000,000 for telemedicine carts, videoconferencing equipment and software licenses and tablets to expand telehealth intensive care units and by deploying video conferencing for patient.
- Excelsior Springs Hospital and Clinics (Excelsior Springs, MO) was awarded $995,000 for remote monitoring and diagnostic equipment that can be deployed to patient homes or other locations in the rural community to provide continued monitoring and evaluation of patients, as well as immediate, around-the-clock access to physicians, specialists and other health care providers.
- Maimonides Medical Center (Brooklyn) was awarded $1,000,000 for a telehealth platform, a remote patient monitoring platform, telemedicine carts that will be deployed at newly configured remote inpatient sites as part of the response to the surge in patient volume due to the COVID-19 emergency, and remote monitoring equipment installed in COVID-19 inpatient rooms.
- Marshfield Medical Center, in Marshfield, Wisconsin, was awarded $1,000,000 for videoconferencing equipment and software, a telehealth platform subscription, laptop computers, and network upgrades to focus telehealth efforts on restoring primary and specialty care services impacted by COVID-19 and maintaining health care provider access to the most critical patients with chronic illnesses at 81 health care facilities in Wisconsin and upper Michigan.
- University of Colorado Health (Aurora, Colorado) was awarded $998,250 for wearable remote monitoring devices so staff in the ICU and other departments can track their own temperature and other vital signs to reduce COVID-19 infections, and for patient monitoring devices that allow staff to conduct remote patient care.
On the other side of the ledger was the smallest of the FCC telehealth awards. Four Rivers Behavioral Health in Paducah, KY, was awarded $4,831 for connected devices and video conferencing equipment to provide remote behavioral health services to individuals with COVID-19 at their home or in a medical facility.
