The State of Tennessee is going to receive a $7.9 million grant from the FCC www.fcc.gov to extend the Tennessee Telehealth Network (TTN) http://myttn.org to an additional 400 facilities. The grant is part of the FCC’s $400 million Rural Health Care Pilot Program www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/rural-health-care-pilot-program which makes it possible for healthcare services to be more readily available in rural and underserved communities.
The non-profit Community Health Network (CHN) www.ecommunity.com will use the FCC grant to bring commercial-quality internet and privacy compliant data exchange infrastructure to healthcare providers in rural Tennessee areas that right now do not have access to these services.
Rural and nonprofit healthcare facilities will be able to provide primary care and specialty healthcare services, such as pediatrics, psychiatry, and ophthalmology. Eventually, the FCC grant will enable healthcare facilities to provide telehealth, e-prescribing services, and enable patients to exchange data through EMRs.
Grantees include the University of Tennessee’s Health Sciences Center, Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga receiving $2.2 million, and Mountain States Health Alliance in upper east Tennessee receiving $93,000.
In September, the Tennessee Department of Health awarded CHN a $1.6 million federal grant to establish the Middle Tennessee Rural Health Information Network to connect four non-profit hospitals in Carthage, Gallatin, Hartsville, and Lafayette to a single health information network.