FCC and other Awards Helped Enable Permanent Telehealth Policy Changes in Virginia

With support from a range of federal agencies the University of Virginia Health System has worked with community hospitals and other healthcare organizations on virtual care. The telemedicine program of the Charlottesville-based University of Virginia Health System was established in 1995 to enhance timely patient access to healthcare services, particularly for patients in rural regions of the Commonwealth of Virginia. With funding support from a broad range of federal agencies – Department of Commerce, HRSA, USDA and FCC – the health system has worked with more than 150 community hospitals, clinics, medical practices, schools and other healthcare entities to bring specialty care to underserved communities and patients. "We already had developed a virtual personal protective equipment model in our special pathogen unit of our Medical ICU, or iSOCOMS," said Dr. Karen Rheuban, cofounder and director of the Center for Telehealth and medical director of telemedicine at the University of Virginia Health System.

"In addition, in 2012, UVA Health launched a remote patient monitoring program to improve patient compliance and clinical outcomes, and to reduce hospital readmissions, hospital length of stay and emergency department visits. With the onset of COVID-19, UVA Health pivoted as an academic health center to scale telehealth technologies that addressed the challenge of clinic closures and the need to limit exposure to COVID-19 both for providers and patients, and provided critically important continuity of care. "The operational challenge of deploying equipment to community partner sites during the early stages of the COVID-19 public health emergency were significant," said Dr. Eugene Sullivan, cofounder of the Center for Telehealth at the University of Virginia Health System. The health system established a virtual urgent care model enabling patients across Virginia to receive care from its emergency medicine providers. The University of Virginia Health System was awarded $767,139 by the FCC telehealth grant program for telemedicine carts, tablets, video monitors, a telehealth platform, remote patient monitoring equipment and network upgrades to support clinical videoconferencing with remote patient-examination tools, to help build a virtual urgent care platform, and to expand the remote patient-monitoring program as patients are diagnosed with COVID-19 or are discharged from the hospital.