Center gets $338,909 grant
STAMFORD — The importance of telehealth services has come to the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a wealth of patients receiving health care via the use of digital devices.
Family Centers Health Care, a nonprofit that provides services for underserved communities, has provided telehealth services to patients since the COVID-19 crisis took form in mid-March. But its telehealth program will soon see big improvements.
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes visited the Family Centers location in Stamford on Wednesday afternoon to announce the nonprofit had received a federal grant of $338,909. The funds, from a grant given by the Federal Communications Commission, will facilitate the purchase of laptop computers and software to enable Family Centers to improve its telehealth services.
“Telehealth is about efficiency,” said Himes, D-4th District. “It is less expensive if you can do as much as you can online. And under these conditions, it is safer. That’s true from prenatal care right up until when people are in nursing homes. It’s about safety — and in this day and age that is really important.”
Family Health Centers offers health, human service and education programs to residents of Stamford, Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan.
“Telehealth it is the future. For a lot of things I do, I don’t need to see the patient,” said Dr. Joseph Hurtado, a physician at Family Centers. “From doing lab work, if someone’s sugar is high, I don’t need to let them come in to let them know they need to start increasing their dose. That is something I can do through telehealth and video.”
Himes also noted how important telehealth is to an organization such as Family Centers Health Care, which has received 9,000 telehealth visits from 2,000 patients since April, according to Chief Health Officer Dennis Torres.
“This center is providing health care to some of our more challenged communities,” Himes said. “Without ready access to what is otherwise very expensive health care, telemedicine is one of the keys to delivering health care to that population and every population.”
Torres explained that although Family Centers has been using a telehealth system since March, the service will be greatly enhanced.
“We’ve been operating with an electronic health record that does not integrate with telehealth, so this grant enables us to purchase an electronic health record that integrates with telehealth,” Torres said. “For patients, telehealth has provided continuity of care, allowing them to access care with no exposure risks to patients, or providers. For providers, telehealth allows for continued quality care and an important source of financial stability for our continued operations.”
“It’s a really smart move for the Federal Communications Commission to invest in electronic health records,” Family Health Centers CEO Bob Arnold said. “This will not only assist the needs today with telehealth, but also really advances the ability of health providers to communicate with each other and for patients to have that unified record, which is so important.
“We already have an electronic health record, but we happen to have one that is better suited to medical case management and mental health services, than for primary health services,” he said. “So the record that we will be able to implement with this grant will be one that is much more in sync with the flow of an examination and the way that a health care professional works with a patient.”
Telehealth allows long distance patient and clinician contact, health care advice, monitoring, education and remote admissions. It can also allow two clinicians to discuss a case in videoconference.
Himes explained the significance of telemedicine during the pandemic.
“We really need to think telemedicine through,” he said. “The country is in a real time experiment around distance learning. We are also in a real time experiment about delivering good and high quality telemedicine.”
The grant received by Family Centers comes from the original Cares Act, Himes noted. He said there should be a next round of funding.
“A glob of money was set aside for telemedicine,” Himes said. “Those negotiations are starting again next week for the next round and we can expect more money to come in this direction. I want to make sure that that dialogue is ongoing.”
Stamford Mayor David Martin pointed out how students in Stamford Public Schools have benefited from the services.
“Because of telehealth they were able to get that help from the social workers they were seeing and providers they were seeing without missing a beat,” Martin said. “Our school clinicians are so delighted with what’s happened with telehealth. In this country, we have created so many barriers in health care. It’s made it more expensive and makes it harder to get. This is part of a nationwide need to lower the barriers for health care for everyone and in the process we will also lower the cost of health care.”