Licensure Portability Grant Program

Description

This notice announces the opportunity to apply for funding under the Licensure Portability Grant Program (LPGP). The purpose of the LPGP is to provide support for state professional licensing boards to carry out programs under which licensing boards of various states cooperate to develop and implement state laws and related policies that will reduce statutory and regulatory barriers to telehealth. Telehealth is defined by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) as the use of electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, health administration and public health. Technologies include video conferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications. This grant aligns with HRSA’s goals of fostering a health care workforce to address current and emerging needs, improving access to quality physical health and behavioral health services, achieving health equity, and enhancing population health. Promoting equity is essential to HRSA’s mission of protecting the health of Americans and providing essential human services. Telehealth expanded over the past decades and experienced significant growth during and since the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Coordinating care improved with the advancement and role of technology. Through telehealth technologies, a health care professional may deliver care from a distant site in a separate state from the patient’s originating site. This wide reach allowed telehealth to emerge as a promising modality for increasing physical health and behavioral health care access, especially in rural areas and communities with workforce shortages. While telehealth has the capacity to facilitate the delivery of health care over long distances, there may be statutory or regulatory barriers to delivering care across state lines. Licensure policies may differ from state to state, and individual states may require a license in the state where the patient is located. To address this, this program seeks to support innovative multi-state collaborations that will enable licensed health care professionals to provide telehealth across states (i.e., licensure portability). This notice of funding opportunity solicits applications from a broad range of state licensing boards such as medicine, nursing, psychology, counseling, therapy, or other licensed health professionals with the capacity to utilize telehealth in the provision of service to patients. Given the increased behavioral health needs over the past few years, this opportunity will provide Special Consideration for social workers. This funding opportunity is available for Competing Continuation Awards and New Awards. • Competing Continuation Awards: Applicants with an existing HRSA funded LPGP (Project Period Start Date: FY 2019 - Current). Applicants may seek Competing Continuation Award to continue successful implementation and expansion of adopted state policies to maximize their impact and advance telehealth. HRSA anticipates making Competing Continuation Awards for a 5-year period of performance at up to $100,000 per year. • New Awards: New Awards will support state professional licensing boards to carry out programs under which licensing boards of various states cooperate to develop and implement state laws and related policies that will reduce statutory and regulatory barriers to improve access to quality physical health and behavioral health services through telehealth technology. HRSA anticipates making New Awards for a 5-year period of performance at up to $150,000 per year. Note: HRSA is including a special consideration for a multi-state licensure collaborative focused on Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSWs) in Section V.2 For more details, see Program Requirements and Expectations.

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