New data mapping tool helps officials identify telemedicine service gaps
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The tool can also help strengthen governments’ efforts to advocate for funding opportunities like the recently announced $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, one expert says.
All 50 states are eligible for a share of $50 billion in federal funds to support the enhancement and maintenance of rural health services and programs, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced last week.
The funding is part of the Rural Health Transformation Program, which will help states deliver “dignity and dependable care to rural communities, making sure every American has access to affordable, high-quality treatment,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a statement.
States can use funds, which will be doled out over five years in increments of $10 billion, for various efforts to improve rural health care delivery, such as remote care and other flexible care arrangements.
But receiving funding to implement such solutions often relies on precise data insights for policymakers and officials to leverage, said Jessica Hauflaire, senior vice president of operations at the American Telemedicine Association.
A new tool developed by ATA, for example, looks to help inform efforts from policymakers, health care providers and community-based organizations to expand access and accessibility to virtual care options.
The Digital Infrastructure Score and Mapping tool, launched last week, helps identify gaps in digital access across U.S. communities at the county and ZIP code level. It measures four factors: an area’s internet availability and speed, lowest monthly broadband cost, a household’s access to devices like a computer or a smart device and internet connection quality.
Based on those metrics, the tool generates a digital infrastructure score to inform users of “the enablers and the barriers that are preventing people from adopting telehealth, virtual care and digital health in their communities,” Hauflaire said. The score reflects a community’s capacity and readiness to leverage telemedicine services.
With the tool, officials “can look at very specific conditions in a specific community and understand what exactly is needed to advance or deploy a program that's digital in nature,” she said. Users could learn, for example, that while their community has access to the internet, they may not have access to devices to use telehealth services.
The score and mapping tool also includes data like state- and county-level poverty rates, household median incomes and the number of broadband companies in the area. Other tool insights include charts that reflect a community’s digital capacity related to community well-being, such as a jurisdiction’s social capital and social vulnerability.
Those insights can encourage officials to support programs and resources that address service gaps, like setting up a telehealth access point in communities or working with local internet service providers to lower internet prices for vulnerable populations, Hauflaire explained.
The tool was built using demographic and internet-related data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Federal Communications Commission and M-Lab. Hauflaire said ATA plans to update data every six months as new information becomes available, and the organization is considering how to incorporate additional data variables, like overlaying population health, to the mapping in the future.
Ultimately, the tool allows policymakers to “work side-by-side with health systems … using the same data to work together on targeted programs to cut out any waste” and improve “digital equity,” Hauflaire said.