Greensburg, IN — U.S. Senator Todd Young was in Greensburg on Monday at Decatur County Memorial Hospital to congratulate the Hospital on receiving over $698,000 in grant funding for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. “Telehealth will allow Decatur County to leverage the latest technology to serve more Hoosiers, lower costs, and provide better care,” said Senator Young. “That’s why I was proud to support this dedicated telehealth funding in the CARES Act and I will continue to advocate for even more funding for Indiana.”
According to DCMH CEO Rex McKinney, the grant has substantial significance, far beyond the hospital. “The network upgrades to our infrastructure will not only afford our community the ability to access medical care via the Internet and telehealth, but also provide benefits for eLearning opportunities. Our physicians and community have been very receptive to using technology to improve access to care. We are pleased to be able to expand our capabilities in this area.”
The grant, awarded from the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau, will support:
• Remote patient monitoring equipment
• A patient telehealth platform
• Network upgrades
• Tablets, and mobile hotspots to provide a variety of telehealth options, including:
o Remote patient visits to reach a wide range of patients
o Rehabilitation assessments using telehealth for physical, occupational and speech therapies
o Behavioral health services for seniors in individual and group sessions, and
o Continuous remote monitoring of patients stable enough to be cared for in the home setting but showing symptoms of COVID-19 infection.
DCMH was one out of a select group of hospitals to receive funding to provide health care providers in both urban and rural areas of the country with telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic. To date, the FCC’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which was authorized by the CARES Act, has approved 444 funding applications in 46 states plus Washington, D.C. for a total of $157.64 million in funding.
