Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise today to offer an amendment to provide an increase in funding for the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, under the Health Resources and Services Administration. I am pleased to say I am joined in this effort by Senators Stabenow, Crapo, and Conrad.

I have spent quite a lot of time over the last month debating how to increase access to affordable health care in this country. Opinions have ranged considerably on this topic, but for most of us the goal is the same--it is to find ways at the Federal level to make health care more affordable for our constituents back home.

Many of us are also trying to bring more options to rural areas or even urban underserved areas where access to care can be challenging.

One thing that both sides of the aisle can agree on and have agreed on during my time here is on a very similar amendment, and that is increasing funding for proven technologies such as telehealth.

Telehealth is the most effective way to deliver many types of care to rural and other populations that have traditionally lacked adequate health care access. Many Americans do not live near certain specialists or they don't live near affordable specialists. This is certainly the case among many small towns in my State of South Dakota.

Telehealth bridges the gap between these patients and providers by enabling doctors and nurses to remotely care for patients, thereby raising the standards of care for underserved populations. Telehealth also increases patient and provider access to medical information and improves training of health care providers. Of course, with increased access to care and less need to travel great distances, patients and providers save money.

I wish to share with my colleagues part of a story from an article in the Platte Enterprise, a local South Dakota newspaper, and a subsequent letter to the editor back in September dealing with telehealth. There are many different medical services that can be provided over long distances through telehealth technology. The Platte Health Center in Platte, SD, already provides some medical specialties through telemedicine, including dermatology and infectious disease. Now they will also be able to provide mental health services.

According to the article: Patients can talk to and see a physician on the television screen who in turn can see and talk to them.

In a subsequent letter to the editor from a user of these types of telemedicine services, my constituent, Kris Kuipers, describes:

I recently experienced the use of telemedicine at Platte Health Center Hospital. I thought it was wonderful. One of our local nurses greeted me and explained the operating equipment. It is great because I didn't have to do a thing.

I was able to talk with my physician in Sioux Falls who was on the TV screen just like if I were talking to Dr. Jerome Bentz. It was very personable and I didn't have to drive four hours round trip.

I am very excited that we have this capability here in town and I hope more physicians will catch on to the advantages of using the telemedicine network equipment. I want to encourage you to tell your out-of-town doctors about our tele-med capabilities at the Platte Health Center Hospital. Maybe by word of mouth, other physicians will be encouraged to use this local alternative as a means of providing health care to our rural communities.

I hear from local providers and patients such as Kris Kuipers very often about the benefits of telehealth to rural communities in my State. In South Dakota, telehealth technologies are utilized by our three major hospital networks: Avera, Sanford, and Rapid City Regional. Additionally, many of the rural health clinics who serve the health care needs of some of the smallest communities in our State also utilize these technologies. These organizations touch more than 40 different communities, large and small across the State.

The Office for the Advancement of Telehealth under HRSA is the primary tool of the Federal Government to develop telehealth resources and to help local providers to develop these resources.

My amendment will provide additional funding to support existing and new telehealth resource centers, including a resource center focused specifically on telehomecare; that is, telemonitoring technologies for patients who have to have their vital signs checked in the home. These resource centers currently help assist the telehealth community in breaking down barriers to the adoption of telehealth.

Additional funding will also support telehealth network grants, pilot projects for the development of telehomecare technologies and grants to help carry out programs where health licensing boards and States come together to reduce their statutory and regulatory barriers to telehealth.

My amendment is very modest. It proposes a $6.8 million increase for the Office of the Advancement of Telehealth, or OAT, to fulfill these activities which were authorized under the Health Care Safety Net Amendments Act of 2002. With this amendment, total funding for OAT would be increased to $13.8 million.

Additionally, this amount is fully offset by a prorated reduction in the departmental management accounts of the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education.

The $6.8 million provided by my amendment, while modest, will have a significant and positive impact on almost every health activity in this wide-reaching bill. Increasing the investment in telehealth is valuable and necessary and will help save money for patients and for the Federal Government.

This is a small but important investment in the future of our Nation's health care system. I hope the $6.8 million increase, when you take it away from all of the various departments that are funded under this bill--this is a multibillion dollar bill--is inconsequential in terms of the impact that can be had by putting that $6.8 million into the advancement of telehealth in this country, making sure that more patients and more providers are able to utilize technology to meet the health care needs of people in rural and underserved areas across this country.

So I hope my colleagues will support this amendment and help us advance this very important initiative.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I ask that the amendment be set aside.

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I appreciate the willingness of the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member to work with us on this amendment. I know of his interest in this particular area of technology of health care, and I appreciate the support. Hopefully, we can figure out a way to get more money into this very important account because it does they are doing some remarkable things, and particularly in the areas the Senator from Iowa and I represent, in the rural areas of the country, and the sky is the limit in terms of what I think can be accomplished. But we have to make sure it is appropriately funded. So I thank the Senator from Iowa for being willing to help out.

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