Lawmakers Asked to Boost Telehealth Resource Center Budget to $27M

Telehealth advocates are petitioning lawmakers to boost the budget for the nation’s network of telehealth resource centers (TRCs), noting they’ve seen an 800 percent increase in business during the pandemic.

“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people that TRCs serve had been multiplying exponentially due to increased national attention on telehealth,” a Sept. 15 letter, addressed to Senators Patty Murray and Roy Blunt, the chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, states. “During the pandemic, TRCs were the only entities in the nation that were able to immediately mobilize to provide technical assistance to the nation as health care providers and entities, both large and small, sought assistance in developing telehealth programs overnight. With the floodgates to telehealth opening, TRCs have been strained beyond capacity with requests for assistance and expert input from providers, hospitals, state emergency planners, associations, and others.”

The National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers, consisting of 12 regional and two national centers, is overseen by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which has set an annual budget of $325,000 for each location since 2006, when the network was launched. Contracts with the TRCs are up for renewal every three years.

In 2020, Congress appropriated an additional $11.6 million, or $828,571 per TRC, through the CARES Act to help the TRCs handle the extra traffic caused by the pandemic. Lawmakers are now considering an amendment to the FY 2022 budget that would add $5 million to the annual baseline TRC budget, raising each TRC’s funding to $682,000.

The letter calls on lawmakers to budget at least $27 million in FY 2022, so that each center gets at least $1.9 million.

“Beyond the ability to provide technical assistance, the TRCs have been invaluable to the federal government for providing insight and data on how telehealth is being administered, concerns that have arisen and more regional and local reactions to it,” the letter states. “As entities that are both regional and national, the TRCs have a direct pulse on the telehealth needs of the nation. The TRCs are able to spot trends on how telehealth is being used, what policy issues are raising concerns, what research is taking place given their deep ties and relationships on the national, state and local levels.”

“Nearly half of the TRCs are associated with universities and are familiar with research taking place,” the letter continues. “Quite simply, the TRCs are where people go to ask telehealth questions, and they are then able to assess what are matters of concerns and issues that are being raised. This information is invaluable to the federal government as it decides the future of telehealth policy in the nation.”

The letter is signed by the American Telemedicine Association, which is hosting its first-ever Telehealth Awareness Week this week, as well as the Alliance for Connected Care, eHealth Initiative, Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), National Rural Health Association, National Association of Community Health Centers, Health Innovation Alliance, Center for Telehealth and eHealth Law (CTeL), Association of American medical Colleges, University of Virginia Health System, University of Hawai’i Health System and Teladoc Health.