The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) https://www.aamc.org has awarded their 2022 Telehealth Equity Catalyst (TEC) Pilot Grants. The AAMC aims to learn how member institutions are addressing and mitigating barriers to care and how to advance healthcare equity.
The 2022 AAMC Telehealth Equity Catalyst (TEC) Awardees include:
- The Johns Hopkins Medicine Telemedicine Equity Working Group has collected data across multiple projects identifying adults over the age of 65 who live in historically marginalized neighborhoods in Baltimore and the District of Columbia. The goal for the Equity Working Group is to develop a systematic plan to promote telehealth access focusing on older adults while consolidating partnerships for formal cross sector collaboration in the coming years. The Group then will develop a framework for how academic health systems can catalyze regional collaborations to advance digital health access equity.
- The University of California Davis has addressed healthcare inequities by using the Virtual Family-Centered Rounds (FCR) in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Previously, this had only been possible for children whose families could physically be at their bedside during rounds. In Neonatal Intensive Care Visits (NICU), parents/guardians may experience barriers which are challenging for rural and low income families that limit family presence at the bedside, The university will continue to evaluate and enhance the Virtual FCR Program focusing on adoption of the program among families with limited/emergent English proficiency.
- The CARES 529 Meeting Street Clinic is a telehealth-based free clinic that provides primary care at a drop-in resource center for homeless people and is a partnership between the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and the Navigation Center, a community based organization providing housing, employment, financial, and other social services. Weekly clinics include medical and physician assistant students as tele-presenters for remote attending physicians and in-person residents who are teleprecepted by a remote attending physician.
- The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Institute for Digital Health & Innovation has launched their Telemedicine Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (TeleSANE-A) program in May 2021 to increase certified nursing access for victims in Arkansas’ EDs particularly in rural and outlying areas. TeleSANE uses the existing statewide telehealth network by connecting nearly every Arkansas hospital to provide equipment, education, and guidance by virtually connecting local clinicians to distant SANE-As for real time video guided medical forensic sexual assault examination support.
- The Oregon Health & Science University has pioneered the use of high fidelity simulated charts within the EHR to train providers on safe and effective EHR use and has now expanded this to integrate the patient and portal application into the EHR simulation environment. This tool will provide a test environment to allow patients and providers to practice using the patient portal without compromising their own personal health information or adversely affecting other functionalities in the EHR.
- The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is going to build the necessary infrastructure to train an initial group of 150 this coming year and is expected to expand the training in future years. Training will be presented as a virtual reality simulation to guide learners through interpersonal communication and clinical case assessment within an interactive environment. Through this project, the MUSC Center for Telehealth education will seek to decrease access issues related to technology-enabled communication that address social, cultural, and health equity issues.
- The Henry Ford Health (HFH), MyCare On-Demand Virtual Care is available to all individuals in Michigan whether a HFH patient or not, through the MyChart EMR patient portal. The HFH project will expand and enhance virtual care capabilities focused on closing the digital divide gap among patients over 65. The project will survey patients with a social determinants of health assessment and provide access to connectivity and devices to help older patients understand the barriers to telehealth use, recruit older patients as digital coaches to help older adults on the use of telehealth, work with the system’s Virtual Care Team and Pursuing Equity in Core Committee, to build a telehealth equity dashboard, and host a Virtual Care Equity Summit.
Go to https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/telehealth-equity-catalyst-awards for more information on the AAMC Telehealth Equity Catalyst Awards and for information on the 2022 AAMC Telehealth Equity Catalyst (TEC) Pilot Grantees. For questions, email telehealth@aamc.org.