Federal Funding to Support Nurse, Rural Public Health Telehealth Training

To provide support for the nursing and rural public health workforce, Avera Health will use new funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to launch several projects involving training on telehealth, telemetry monitoring, virtual nursing, and cultural awareness.

Serving South Dakota and surrounding parts of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota, Avera Health is an integrated health system with 37 hospitals, 200-plus primary and specialty care clinics, and 40 senior living facilities.

After receiving a total of $2.5 million in funding from HRSA through two grants, Avera health aims to advance virtual care training for nurses and the rural public health workforce.

“Health care workforce is a critical need throughout the entire Avera footprint. The solution isn’t simply to hire more, because there aren’t enough trained and qualified nurses and other frontline caregivers for all the needs that exist. We are looking to novel ways to better support the professionals we have through technology, to maximize innovative solutions for caregivers to spend more time doing what led them to this profession — helping others, and reduce time spent doing administrative and regulatory tasks like documentation,” said Rachael Sherard, senior vice president for rural health at Avera, in a press release.

The first grant, known as Project NEXT, provides $1.5 million in funding. This grant will support a three-year Rural Public Health Workforce Training Network Program, which will provide cross-training on skills related to telehealth, health information technology, and virtual care services like telemetry monitoring and virtual nursing.

Through cross-training, other staff members will be able to take on some duties assigned to nurses, thereby enabling nurses to spend more time on patient care, according to the press release.

Further, telehealth, telemetry monitoring, and virtual nursing allow for remote care through interactive virtual technology.

“Following the national trend, South Dakota’s most acute health workforce need is certainly nursing in rural areas. Project NEXT offers Avera an opportunity to support nursing staff, not simply by hiring more RNs, but also by leveraging the capacity of its health IT workforce to intervene in ways that are new and cutting-edge,” said Sherard.

A second $1 million grant provided over three years is part of the Nurse Education, Practice, Quality, and Retention (NEPQR) Registered Nurse Training Program (RNTP).

The funding will support PREPARE-RNs: Partnering to Address the Critical Nursing Shortage in South Dakota, a project that aims to prepare BSNs and RNs to work in rural acute-care critical access hospitals through education on cultural awareness, social determinants of health, and health literacy.

Several critical access hospitals in the Avera network will serve as initial training sites, including Avera Dells Area Health Center and Avera De Smet Memorial Hospital.

This isn’t the first time HRSA has helped fund telehealth projects. In September, the Medical University of South Carolina Center for Telehealth received a grant to improve healthcare training and job placement in rural areas.

The health system said it would use the three-year grant to support educational opportunities for high school and technical college students to gain insight into telehealth capabilities. These opportunities include telehealth lectureships, internships for health IT students, and clinical virtual care programs for nursing students.

Also, in September, Equum Medical announced that it would work with the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) to widen access to telehealth resources.

Through this partnership, NRHA members will gain access to Equum's services, including tele-ED, which supports surge and early intervention efforts, and tele-critical care, which supports models of intensivist-led care.