Editor’s Note: Cheryl Henshaw, National Director of Poly’s Grants Assistance Program co-authored this post.

The recently approved American Rescue Plan (ARP) provides an unprecedented amount of funding for healthcare with a primary focus on COVID response and recovery. The plan puts a strong emphasis on increasing healthcare capacity – including health professional and paraprofessional workforce development, graduate medical education, mental health and substance abuse treatment and prevention. Investment in collaboration technologies that enable telehealth and remote learning is encouraged in the various component programs under the ARP umbrella, serving as a critical element of providing equitable access to these educational and clinical services

Today, we will highlight one component healthcare program of the ARP – The Health Services and Resource Administration’s (HRSA) $6.1 Billion H8F funding for Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs).

FQHCs play a significant healthcare delivery role for medically underserved and vulnerable populations. FQHCs serve as the medical home for tens of millions of Americans, providing primary medical and dental care, mental/behavioral health and substance abuse services, care coordination, disease management, maternal health, and early child development services. Many FQHCs provide health services in public schools, including school-based telehealth. These valuable, but traditionally underfunded health centers will soon have the opportunity to enhance their operations through the HRSA H8F funding program. The use of funds allows for everything from investments in collaboration infrastructure and technologies to upgrading facilities and deploying mobile units that allow for the continuity of operations and greater access to healthcare services.

The program’s initial focus is on COVID response and recovery-related activities such as testing, contact tracing, treatment, training health professionals, vaccine scheduling and administration, medical oversight post-vaccination, and follow-up. Collaboration technologies – including voice and video platforms – have a significant role to play here for contact tracing; COVID testing and vaccine administration coordination, training and oversight; and delivery of essential clinical services by telehealth. As a critical mass of citizens gets vaccinated, the focus will shift to capacity building, and the H8F funding will allow FQHCs to expand clinical service offerings and access to care using telehealth technologies.

HOW CAN HRSA H8F FUNDS BE UTILIZED

Some examples of use cases where collaboration technologies can build FQHCs’ healthcare capacity are listed on the program’s website, and have been summarized below:

• Maintaining & Increasing Capacity for Primary Care Services – Expanding and enhancing health center telehealth capacity to perform triage, deliver care, support care transitions, and support follow-up via telehealth. Support access to virtual care for patients with unstable/no housing or other barriers to accessing care. Supporting care coordination with other health care providers for patients that require hospitalization or other advanced care and treatment not available through the health center. Providing short-term health services to individuals recovering from an acute illness or injury. Enhancing or expanding access to behavioral health (mental health and substance use disorder) services.
• Recovery & Stabilization – Enhancing and expanding the health care workforce and services to meet pent up demand due to delays in patients seeking preventive and routine care; address the behavioral health, chronic conditions, and other needs of those who have been out of care; and support the well-being of personnel who have been on the front lines of the pandemic. Enhancing patient activation and engagement, including through virtual and in-person outreach and education, self-management programs and techniques, partnerships with families and caregivers, patient-centered care coordination, and other evidence-based interventions to support self-care. Increasing team-based and inter-professional service delivery through both in-person and virtual visits to provide continuity of care.
• Infrastructure: Minor Alteration/Renovation (A/R), Mobile Units, & Vehicles – Facilitating access to mobile testing and vaccinations, as well as other primary care activities. Reconfiguring space to maximize the ongoing use of telehealth technology (e.g., configuring spaces to better accommodate video screens and creating telehealth command centers).

TAKING ACTION TO ACCESS ARP FUNDS

HRSA H8F funds have already been allocated to FQHCs based on a formula that includes the number of patients served, among other factors. FQHCs must now submit paperwork to be able to access the funds which includes a budget detailing how the funds will be spent and a “use case” justification. As with much of the stimulus funding, there is no exhaustive list of “eligible vs ineligible” items; instead, FQHCs should align their intended use of funds to the funding priorities (which are broad in scope). Matching the challenges faced by the FQHC with the use of funding to address those challenges and then aligning technology expenditures to the funding priorities is the clearest path to ensure your proposed expenditures are approved.

For more information or support on how to construct that justification, or on grant funding in general, please feel free to contact the Poly Grants Assistance Program (PGAP) at grants@poly.com. The PGAP team will also bring in technical and telehealth experts from the Poly team to assist with case development and designing solutions that match your FQHC’s needs.

While some changes from Round 1 are anticipated, the program will likely retain certain core elements.

• First, the program covers certain capital expenditures, including equipment, software, licensing, and connectivity, and does not cover personnel, services, or other non-capital expenses.
• Second, the expenses must be tied to Covid-19 related services or challenges that are addressed by telehealth, with a priority given to areas that are hardest hit by the pandemic or that provide care to vulnerable populations.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM ROUND 1 OF FUNDING

There are several lessons learned from Round 1 applications that will be beneficial in preparing for the next round of funding. Applicants should fully describe their need – who they are serving, how they have been impacted by Covid-19, how many patients they expect to serve (or patient encounters they expect to conduct), and the positive benefits anticipated as a result of the project.

The scope of the project budget should align with the volume of patients you will serve, with equipment choices matching the intended population. For example, a project that requests funding for 10,000 licenses but only projects to serve 500 patients is unlikely to be approved or fully funded. Requests for hospital-grade solutions to be provided in home settings will likely be problematic.

An important bit of advice – make sure that each section of the application is addressed fully and completely and use attachments if necessary to help the reviewers fully understand your organization’s unique challenges and your proposed solution.

OTHER SOURCES OF FEDERAL FUNDING

The FCC Telehealth Fund is just the beginning – there are several other significant sources of Federal funding anticipated within the next several months. While the funding programs are focused on addressing the pandemic, the capital investments subsidized by these funds lay down the foundation of telehealth infrastructure that can be leveraged long after the pandemic. The following are a few of the strategic considerations that should be taken into account when planning both your funding applications and your organization’s telehealth strategy:

Which collaboration service(s) will you be using?

Many healthcare organizations scrambled to implement telehealth to respond to the pandemic. As a result, individual departments or organizational units often deployed different collaboration services, each with their own benefits and challenges. As your organization moves forward, are you considering standardizing on a single collaboration service (e.g. Zoom or Microsoft Teams), or do you intend to support multiple different services? If you’re going to standardize, then you should consider the purchase of videoconferencing endpoints that can run these collaboration providers in “native” mode. Poly’s endpoints are designed to work with all of the major collaboration platforms and can run in native mode if your organization standardizes on one platform. If your organization decides to support multiple services, then interoperability is key. Poly’s RealPresence Collaboration Server is designed to allow legacy standards-based endpoints and multiple cloud collaboration services to interoperate, serving as a backbone for seamless videoconferencing across your enterprise.

What computing “engine” will you be using in your healthcare facilities?

Healthcare can be a challenging environment for implementation. Using dedicated Poly endpoints like the Poly Studio X Family, Telehealth Station, or G7500 can address several unique challenges for collaboration in a clinical environment:

• End users don’t have admin rights on computers in most healthcare settings. So, it’s difficult and time-consuming to install/update software or USB hardware on computers that are at the bedside or in the examination room. Poly endpoints can be easily deployed, managed, and kept up to date.
• Host computers have variable auto-shutdown and auto-sleep settings. Poly endpoints can be configured to be always-on and/or standby (wake) mode.
• There is much variability in PC-hosted collaboration solutions in clinical environments – both in the performance of the computers themselves and attached peripherals. Poly endpoints are purpose-designed to provide the best superior audio and video performance for collaboration.

Do you have a plan for a consistent and professional videoconferencing experience for your staff, providers, and patients who are working from home?

Our Poly Studio P Series products improve the experience for physicians and staff who use their laptops or desktop computers to work from home or the medical office. The Studio P5 webcam is available in a packaged Studio P5 kit that also includes a headset or personal speakerphone all in one package that’s easy to set up by patients, providers, or staff.

These are just a few of the considerations that you should factor in planning your grant applications and in developing your long-term telehealth strategy. If you have any questions about the FCC Covid-19 Telehealth Fund or other emerging Federal funding opportunities, please contact the Poly Grants Assistance Program at Grants@poly.com. To learn more about Poly’s healthcare solutions, visit poly.com/ healthcare or contact your Poly representative or channel partner.

Our authors, Scott and Cheryl sat down with Jonathan Clark, and Neil Fluester to discuss these topics in-depth and more on last week’s Poly Weekly News program – check it out if you haven’t already done so:

I’ve only been a member of the Poly team since November, but it feels like it’s been years. I think that’s because I’ve been a Poly user and customer since the beginning of my career at the NASA Johnson Space Center where we used Plantronics headsets over 30 years ago. Later on in my career, I chose Polycom to power the telemedicine network at the East Carolina University Telemedicine Center and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. So, in a way, joining Poly was like a homecoming.

Throughout my entire career in the telehealth space, I’ve said to myself, “This is going to be the year that telehealth really takes off.” I could have never predicted that the black swan event of Covid-19 would have finally been the catalyst for the explosive growth of telehealth. I can’t say that I’m happy about the circumstances, however, in the year to come we will see healthcare organizations expand their use of telehealth in exciting new ways and Poly will be well-positioned to spearhead this expanded use of technology – starting now. Poly is thrilled to announce a pair of new telehealth-focused products, the Poly Telehealth Station and the Poly Telehealth Cart.

POLY’S NEW SOLUTIONS FOR TELEHEALTH

The Poly Telehealth Station is an all-in-one healthcare video communication system that is optimized for use in clinical environments – including:

• A medical-grade 24″ touchscreen monitor
• High-definition Eagle Eye IV pan, tilt, and 12x optical zoom camera
• Stereo line-in input with M-Mode wideband audio, for transmitting clinical audio, like sounds from electronic stethoscopes
• Ability to share content (via HDMI or USB), such as video examination scopes and other clinical imaging devices at up to UHD definition
• Built-in 360° microphone and speaker
• Flexible mounting options: either desktop stand or a variety of mounting options

The Poly Telehealth Cart pairs the Telehealth Station with a CAPSA Trio Cart to provide a solution that can readily move from the bedside to the exam room, to the conference room, to urgent care. The height-adjustable cart will allow for usage with patients standing, sitting or in a wheelchair.  The built-in rechargeable battery makes sure the cart can operate unplugged for up to eight hours. The cart has a 20% smaller footprint than comparable carts that make it more maneuverable and easier to stow when it is not in use.

MUCH TO GAIN

These new telehealth products expand Poly’s broad lineup of products and services that have applications across the healthcare enterprise. Digital collaboration, enhanced by Poly’s innovative audio and video improve the experience for patients, their family, clinical providers, and staff. Furthermore, there are several benefits pertaining to productivity and patient experience by incorporating collaboration in healthcare in ways that might seem to go beyond a ‘traditional’ telehealth application. For example, remote patient visitation has emerged as a significant need during the pandemic, as family members are not often allowed to visit their loved ones in hospitals, nursing homes, or other facilities in which they are isolated. Similarly, Covid patients can be remotely observed by clinical staff, reducing the time and expense of donning and doffing personal protective equipment each time they enter and exit a patient’s room. Poly’s solutions enable hybrid clinical office environments that mix both in-person staffing and personnel that are working from home.

POLY SOLUTIONS FOR TELEHEALTH

In addition to the new products described above – the Poly Telehealth Station and Poly Telehealth Cart, Poly has you covered for healthcare collaboration:

Poly Studio Family

Our intelligent all-in-one video bar systems such as the Poly Studio USB, Studio X30, and Studio X50 are perfect for small to medium-sized rooms like patient rooms, flexible rooms, break rooms, consultation rooms, private offices, and high-volume consultation services being provided from home.

Poly Sync Family

Our new sleek and portable Poly Sync Family of USB/Bluetooth® smart speakerphones enhance the mobile experience for providers, staff, and patients, by providing remarkable sound quality while reducing distracting background noise.

Poly EagleEye Mini

Our small but mighty high-definition EagleEye Mini camera paired with Poly headsets improves the visual experience for physicians and staff who use their laptop or desktop computers to practice from home or their medical office.

Poly G7500

Our flagship G7500 is an integrator’s dream for supporting larger rooms and complex environments, like operating rooms and training and simulation facilities. This modular system for video conferencing enables you to configure the system you want while providing rich collaboration experiences.

Poly Headsets & Desk Phones

Our professional-grade headsets and desk phones are optimized for comfortable all-day use and are perfect for knowledge workers in healthcare who are heavy phone users.

POLY IS HERE TO HELP

Additional funding for telehealth was included in the 2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), so stay on the lookout for additional information on funding from our Poly Grants Assistance Program (PGAP). Additionally, the telehealth reimbursement rules that were put in place to expand access to telehealth are likely to stay in effect for the foreseeable future, as reflected in the Medicare Rules for 2021.

2021 is going to be an exciting time for telehealth and an exciting time to be on team Poly. I can’t wait to see what we do together to improve healthcare in the year to come. For more information about Poly solutions for healthcare, visit https://www.poly.com/healthcare.