Identifying Measures and Data Elements for the HRSA Evidence-Based Tele-Emergency Network Grant Program

Date
03/2020
Description

To address the many challenges affecting small and rural emergency departments (EDs), the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) in the Health Resources and Services Administration established the Evidence-Based Tele-Emergency Network Grant Program (EB TNGP). In 2014, this program awarded grants to six ED-based telehealth (tele-ED) networks to expand the delivery of tele-ED in rural hospitals across the U.S. In 2015, FORHP awarded a cooperative agreement to the Rural Telehealth Research Center to customize a standardized set of measures to the six EB TNGP grantees and then to systematically collect data from them on all of their tele-ED cases during a 26-month period. This brief details multi-project work to identify the standardized set of measures appropriate to tele-ED, create an Excel-based tool, termed the Tele-Emergency Performance Assessment Reporting Tool, and systematically collect data from the grantees. The resulting data repository of 4,324 tele-ED cases has been analyzed to yield five published articles to date with more in development.

Center
Rural Telehealth Research Center
Authors
Marcia Ward, Fred Ullrich, Kimberly Merchant, Nicholas Mohr, Paula Weigel, Clinton MacKinney, Sarah Heppner