Digital Health Projects
MCD Global Health (MCD) was selected as a subawardee to support the implementation of Maine’s technology and innovation initiatives in close collaboration with Maine DHHS and statewide partners. This includes supporting the implementation of a variety of digital health solutions and modalities, including telehealth, remote-patient monitoring, provider-to-provider consultations, and digital therapeutics deployed across partner sites, with a focus on reducing distance as a barrier to specialty care, behavioral health, and chronic disease management.
Click the buttons below to explore each funding opportunity, including its objectives, priority populations, expected outcomes, and implementation considerations:
GENERAL
Virtual Quick Care
Telehealth Expansion: Direct-to-Patient Care
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Project Details
Virtual Quick Care will establish a statewide virtual acute care service providing timely access to licensed clinicians through telehealth. The service will offer guaranteed same-day appointments, including after-hours and weekend care, helping address access barriers associated with geography, provider shortages, and limited availability of timely care in rural Maine.
Who We're Serving
The service will be available statewide, with particular emphasis on rural communities where timely acute care may be limited. It will provide convenient virtual access to licensed clinicians, reducing barriers related to distance, provider availability, and access to after-hours care.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Statewide access to virtual actue care and up to 1,000 virtual visits per month.
- Expected impact: Expand access to same-day acute care; increase availability of after-hours and weekend care; and reduce geographic and provider-access barriers for rural residents.
Funding Details
Objective: Establish a statewide, virtual acute care program to deliver same-day care with evening and weekend availability to all individuals in Maine, with outreach focused on rural communities, providers, and the public. Program goals include reducing avoidable ED utilization and unnecessary travel burdens for patients.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must be legally operating in Maine with a UEI; maintain billing processes that maximize reimbursement from all available third-party payers, including MaineCare, and private insurance, as well as adhere to billing requirements under MaineCare Section 90, Physician Services. Applicants must maintain a valid license through the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine, the Maine Board of Osteopathic Licensure, or the Maine State Board of Nursing; have a platform that supports secure, HIPPA compliant telehealth visits, patient access, technical support, reporting, privacy/security requirements, and any required integration or data export expectations. Willing and able to provide service to rural zip codes.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website
Automated Text Messaging
Patient-facing Digital Health Tool
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Project Details
Chronic diseases and conditions are the leading cause of illness and death in Maine and are a key driver of rising healthcare costs. Adults with chronic conditions need consistent medical care and support to avoid complications and make healthy choices. In rural areas, access to ongoing medical care and lifestyle support may be limited due to multiple barriers to care. The Maine Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is implementing an Automated Text Messaging (ATM) system for adults with chronic health conditions in rural Maine. The service is intended to deliver scalable, low-barrier support services, such as reminders, education, nudges, and follow-up prompts to patients, complementing—not replacing—clinical care, MaineCare-covered services, or emergency care. In providing chronic disease management support direct to patients, the program aims to improve patient adherence to treatment plans, thereby improving health outcomes for patients with chronic conditions.
Who We're Serving
This program is intended to support:
- Patients with chronic conditions in rural Maine, and
- Rural healthcare providers.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Statewide access to virtual actue care and up to 1,000 virtual visits per month.
- Expected impact: Expand access to same-day acute care; increase availability of after-hours and weekend care; and reduce geographic and provider-access barriers for rural residents.
Funding Details
Eligibility: Eligibility is restricted to applicants who can demonstrate legal authorization to operate and conduct business in the United States and State of Maine. Applicants must demonstrate the ability to operate a secure, reliable automated text messaging service that complies with applicable privacy, consent, accessibility, and telecommunications requirements. Applicants must have the capacity to support statewide implementation, maintain participant enrollment and opt-in/opt-out processes, execute any required data-sharing agreements, and collect and report required utilization and performance data. Participation in monitoring, evaluation, and quality improvement activities is required.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website
PREGNANT & POSTPARTUM
Perinatal Specialty Consults
Telehealth Expansion: Provider-to-Provider
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Project Details
Healthcare access to perinatal and maternal care is a challenge for many rural Mainers due to distance and facility closures. The Perinatal Specialty Consults program will connect rural providers with perinatal experts to improve maternal-fetal outcomes, improve accessibility to specialty services, and reduce the need for patient travel.
Who We're Serving
This project supports Maine-based:
- Rural obstetric and neo-natal providers and hospitals, and
- Pregnant and postpartum individuals living in rural Maine.
The project benefits rural obstetric providers by connecting them to timely perinatal specialty consults, which ultimately benefits pregnant and postpartum individuals who may experience barriers to specialty care due to distance, transportation challenges, or limited access to specialty maternal health services.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Up to 100 consults/month.
- Impact: Increase connectivity between rural providers and perinatal specialty input; Reduce avoidable travel, referral delays, and unnecessary transfers; Enhance early identification of at-risk conditions.
- Baseline: The closures of almost half of Maine’s birthing units have negatively impacted rural communities’ access to perinatal services. Telehealth specialty consults allow rural providers an opportunity to bridge the gap in care by accessing specialty consults, thereby expanding access, supporting local care management, and improved continuity of maternal-newborn care.
Funding Details
Objective: Enable rural providers with perinatal patients to access real-time and pre-scheduled provider-to-provider perinatal specialty (MFM and/or obstetrics specialist) consultations. Fully integrate specialty consults into existing clinical workflows, thereby strengthening local provider response to acute and/or high-risk obstetrical cases, improving timely access to specialists, and reducing unnecessary referrals and patient travel.
Eligibility: Applicants must be care delivery sites in rural Maine that serve perinatal patients but may have limited access to OB specialists; importantly, participating organizations do NOT need to have an active Labor and Delivery Unit in order to qualify as a partner for Perinatal Specialty Consults. Applicants must have secure technology and clinical workflow capacity for real-time consultations and/or asynchrnous consults; support provider onboarding, training, adoption, documentation, referrals, escalation, and care coordination; and participate in required utilization, access, quality, performance, privacy/security, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting activities. Preference may be given to applicants currently serving rural, underserved, uninsured, and/or MaineCare populations.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: TBD
Objective: Provide statewide, provider-to-provider perinatal specialty consultation services to providers caring for perinatal patients in rural Maine. Consultations should be delivered both on-demand and pre-scheduled, providing real-time specialist recommendations as needed for high-risk and/or acute patient needs. Perinatal specialty consultations should be provided by a Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) provider or an Obstetrical Specialist depending on the patient case. Access to these perinatal speciality consultations should improve local provider capacity and clinical decision making and reduce avoidable patient referrals and travel.
Eligibility: Respondents must be authorized to operate and in good standing, maintain a FEIN and UEI, and demonstrate qualified telehealth/digital-health vendor capacity; maintain a network of appropriately trained, Maine-licensed perinatal specialists; offer secure synchronous technology; define clear routing, response, documentation, and escalation standards; demonstrate capability to support statewide implementation; payer-of-last-resort controls; applicable MaineCare and billing capability; HIPAA/privacy/security safeguards; and monitor utilization, timeliness, quality, outcome, monitoring, and performance-reporting.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website
Mammha Perinatal Care App
Telehealth Expansion: Patient-facing Digital Application
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Project Details
Mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, are a leading cause of preventable pregnancy-related mortalities; in Maine, access to mental health services is complicated by a patient's physical location. Rural pregnant and postpartum patients often struggle to be connected to mental health services, due to both a lack of mental healthcare providers in rural areas and universal mental health screening tools. In an effort to standardize maternal mental health screenings, improve access to perinatal mental health services and resources, and reduce burdens of care on rural care providers, Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funds will be used to expand the reach of Mammha across rural community partners. Mammha is a patient-facing app that offers maternal mental health screening, referrals to perinatal mental health services, and connections to both local and virtual resources. By providing rural Maine healthcare providers, community organizations, and government agencies with the referral tools necessary to connect patients to the Mammha app, patients will have access to resources and support needed to access mental health services.
Who We're Serving
This program is intended to support:
- Pregnant and postpartum patients across Maine, with an emphasis on those located in rural areas,
- Rural obstetrical care providers,
- Community organizations and government agencies that serve perinatal populations, and
- Perinatal mental health providers.
Expanding community access to Mammha is primarily focused on connecting pregnant and postpartum patients to the appropriate behavioral health resources. Emphasis is placed on those who may experience barriers to receiving mental healthcare due to distance, transportation challenges, or limited access to maternal mental health services.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: 10 rural healthcare and/or community partner organizations that able and willing to adopt Mammha referral pathway, connecting their perinatal clients to the Mammha app for perinatal mental health support.
- Impact: Increased adoption and utilization of Mammha, with up to 400 referrals to Mammha per implementation site; increase of referrals placed to perinatal mental health services; reduced patient wait times for perinatal mental health services; improved local provider capacity.
- Baseline: Select rural Maine WIC offices currently direct clients to receive resources via the Mammha app. The NICU at Barbara Bush Children's Hospital offers parents a year of services via the Mammha app after their babies are discharged from the unit.
Funding Details
Objective: Train and support participating sites in adopting the Mammha app into their clinical and/or operational workflows, thereby expanding timely access to standardized mental health screening tools, referrals to perinatal behavioral health services, and local & national maternal health resources for rural pregnant and postpartum Mainers.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must provide clinical and/or social services to the perinatal population in Maine and demonstrate the capacity to identify, educate, and refer patients to Mammha. Applicants must demonstrate the ability to integrate Mammha into existing clinical, care coordination, referral, documentation, and follow-up workflows; collect and report required monitoring and evaluation data; participate in quality improvement and learning activities; and comply with applicable payer, privacy, security, and reporting requirements. Preference may be given to organizations who have piloted Mammha through other funding sources and would benefit from continued opportunity to expand access to perinatal behavioral health resources.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Objective: Provide access to the Mammha app, including standardized mental health screening tools, referral pathways, and local & national resources, to rural Maine providers and perinatal patients. Integrate appropriate trainings, outreach, and technical support to local care delivery sites to ensure integration of the Mammha app into local workflows is successful. In expanding access to Mammha, rural pregnant and postpartum Mainers will receive timely and appropriate behavioral health screening, referrals, and/or resources, improving perinatal mental health outcomes in rural Maine.
Eligibility: This solicitation is restricted to Mammha as the entity identified to provide the services in Maine's RHTP contract. Mammha shall maintain all licenses, registrations, certifications, and other authorizations required to perform the activities included in the Scope of Work.
Funding Type: Subaward
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Perinatal Remote Patient Monitoring
Telehealth Expansion: Bringing Care Directly to Patients
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Project Details
The Maine Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is expanding access to maternal health support through a Perinatal Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) initiative for pregnant and postpartum individuals. This telehealth model uses remote monitoring technology and care coordination to support early identification of complications, improve continuity of care, and expand access to maternal health services for rural communities.
Who We're Serving
This project is intended to support:
- Obstetric practices,
- Rural hospitals and labor and delivery programs,
- Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs),
- Home health agencies and maternal health organizations, and
- Pregnant and postpartum individuals living in rural Maine.
The project ultimately benefits pregnant and postpartum individuals who may experience barriers to ongoing monitoring and care due to distance, transportation challenges, or limited access to specialty maternal health services. Emphasis is placed on individuals at risk for pregnancy-related and postpartum hypertension and other conditions requiring ongoing monitoring and care coordination.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Support enrollment of up to 100 pregnant or postpartum participants per month through participating maternal health organizations and RPM services.
- Impact: Improve maternal health outcomes, support early identification of pregnancy-related complications, increase patient engagement, and strengthen continuity of care during pregnancy and the postpartum period.
- Baseline: Rural communities often face challenges of accessing ongoing maternal health monitoring and specialty support, particularly for individuals experiencing pregnancy-related hypertension or other conditions requiring close follow-up.
Funding Details
Objective: Enable participating clinical organizations to adopt standardized Remote Patient Monitoring workflows that support proactive management of hypertension, heart failure, other high-risk chronic conditions, and pregnancy-related hypertension. Participation will improve chronic disease management and maternal health outcomes, strengthen patient engagement and self-management, support early identification of clinical deterioration and pregnancy-related complications, improve continuity of care, strengthen care coordination, support early intervention, and reduce avoidable emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and adverse maternal and chronic disease outcomes.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must provide clinical services in Maine and demonstrate the capacity to identify, enroll, educate, engage, and support patients participating in Remote Patient Monitoring programs. Applicants must demonstrate the ability to integrate RPM services into existing clinical, care coordination, referral, documentation, reimbursement, and follow-up workflows; collect and report required monitoring and evaluation data; participate in quality improvement and learning activities; and comply with applicable payer, privacy, security, and reporting requirements. Preference may be given to organizations serving rural, underserved, uninsured, and/or MaineCare populations.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Objective: Provide a scalable statewide Remote Patient Monitoring service that supports adults with hypertension, heart failure, and other high-risk chronic conditions, as well as pregnant and postpartum individuals requiring maternal health monitoring. Services will improve chronic disease management and maternal health outcomes through ongoing monitoring, patient engagement, self-management support, timely intervention, care coordination, expanded access to home-based monitoring services, and delivery of a standardized statewide RPM model.
Eligibility: Respondents must be authorized to conduct business and remain in good standing, maintain a FEIN and UEI, and demonstrate qualified Remote Patient Monitoring vendor capacity, including secure RPM technology, connected device management, patient enrollment and onboarding, monitoring and escalation workflows, provider implementation support, reporting capability, and statewide operational capacity. Respondents must comply with applicable licensing, MaineCare, Medicare, commercial payer, privacy, security, payer-of-last-resort, reporting, and state and federal requirements and demonstrate the ability to support monitoring, evaluation, quality improvement, and performance measurement activities.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website
CHILDREN & YOUTH
Youth Tele-behavioral Health
Telehealth Expansion: Direct-to-patient Care
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Project Details
A statewide program expanding youth tele-behavioral health services to increase access to youth-serving clinicians with a focus on rural areas, school partners and students ages 12-18. Rural Maine communities often have worse behavioral health outcomes than the national average. Similar models of this program have been successfully implemented in select school districts in response to access barriers faced by remote regions of Maine. While these models have included a Community Health Workers (CHW) embedded in school districts to help with facilitation, proposals are not limited to this model. Additionally, this program is not restricted to facilitation in the school setting only, as youth may also prefer to access appointments at home or in another setting.
Who We're Serving
School-aged students and youth across Maine, with a focus on ages 12-18 in rural zip codes. While Maine is experiencing a behavioral health workforce shortage, rural populations face additional barriers, such as long travel times.
The project benefits rural obstetric providers by connecting them to timely perinatal specialty consults, which ultimately benefits pregnant and postpartum individuals who may experience barriers to specialty care due to distance, transportation challenges, or limited access to specialty maternal health services.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Up to 1,000 visits per month.
- Impact: Establish tele-behavioral health services in participating schools; Increase in youth enrolled in TBH statewide; Reduced barriers to care; Improved behavioral health outcomes for participants.
- Build off previous MCD and State pilots in Maine.
Funding Details
Objective: Expand youth tele-behavioral health services to the school setting to increase access to youth-serving clinicians with a focus on rural school districts and grades 6-12 or ages 12-18. Provide assistance for student referrals both during and outside of school hours.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must be operating in Maine as demonstrated through registration documents and be located in a rural zip code as defined by HRSA. Applicants must demonstrate capacity to adhere to monitoring and evaluation reporting requirements for program outputs and outcomes. Eligible schools must also be able to provide a private, confidential space for telehealth appointments to take place.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Objective: Expand best-practice youth tele-behavioral health services to increase access to youth-serving clinicians with a focus on rural areas, school partners and students ages 12-18, increasing the proportion of Maine school-aged youth receiving needed behavioral health services. Ensure tele-behavioral health is coordinated with the youth's primary care provider and identify and address needs for wrap-around services. Increase the capacity of school and youth-service settings to provide tele-behavioral healthcare services to Maine youth.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must be legally operating in Maine as demonstrated by proof of registration or Certificate of Good Standing with the Secretary of State. Applicants must employ relevant credentialed clinicians licensed to practice in Maine who are available to provide services within 5 days of revceiving necessary approvals and releases from the parent or guardian. Applicants must demonstrate enrollment in MaineCare and maximize reimbursement from all third party payers. Applicant must demonstrate ability to offer sliding scale or other mechanisms to accommodate youth who are uninsured or whose insurance does not fully cover the visit. Preference may be given to applicants who can demonstrate specialized skills and experience in providing behavioral-health care to the youth population.
Funding Type: Subaward
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
ADULTS & OLDER PEOPLE
Nursing Home Telehealth Consultations
Telehealth Expansion: Bringing Care Directly to Patients
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Project Details
The Maine Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is expanding access to geriatric specialty care and geriatric psychiatry services through a statewide telehealth initiative serving residents of Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) and long-term care settings. This telehealth model connects residents and care teams with specialty providers to address workforce shortages and limited access to geriatric expertise in rural communities, helping improve access to care and reduce avoidable emergency department visits and hospital transfers.
Who We're Serving
This project is intended to support:
- Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs),
- Long-term care facilities,
- Rural healthcare organizations serving older adults, and
- Residents requiring geriatric specialty care or geriatric psychiatry services.
The project ultimately benefits older adults living in rural Maine who may face barriers to specialty care due to workforce shortages, geographic distance, transportation challenges, and limited access to geriatric specialists. Emphasis is placed on individuals with chronic conditions, behavioral health needs, medication-management challenges, and other complex care needs that benefit from timely specialty consultation.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Support implementation across up to 15 participating Skilled Nursing Facilities and delivery of up to 100 geriatric specialty and geriatric psychiatry consultations per month.
- Impact: Improve access to geriatric specialty expertise, reduce avoidable emergency department visits and hospital transfers, improve management of chronic and behavioral health conditions, and strengthen support for aging in place.
- Baseline: Many rural nursing facilities experience limited access to geriatric specialists and geriatric psychiatry providers due to workforce shortages and geographic barriers. Telehealth consultations offer an opportunity to improve timely access to specialty care without requiring travel outside the facility.
Funding Details
Objective: Enable participating nursing facilities to adopt standardized telehealth workflows that expand timely access to geriatric specialty and geriatric psychiatry services, strengthen care coordination and continuity of care, improve management of chronic conditions, behavioral health needs, and medication-related issues, reduce avoidable emergency department visits and hospital transfers, support aging in place through access to specialty expertise, and enable residents to receive appropriate specialty care within their local facility whenever possible.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must be nursing facilities operating in Maine and demonstrate organizational readiness to participate in telehealth implementation, including technology readiness assessments, workflow integration, staff training, resident participation, scheduling coordination, reporting, monitoring, evaluation, and quality improvement activities. Applicants must support resident privacy, consent, and HIPAA-compliant workflows and maintain all applicable state and federal licensing and regulatory requirements. Preference may be given to facilities serving rural, underserved, uninsured, and/or MaineCare populations.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Objective: Provide scalable tele-geriatric and geriatric psychiatry consultation services that expand access to specialty expertise for residents of rural nursing facilities, improve clinical decision-making, strengthen care coordination and continuity of care, improve management of chronic medical and behavioral health conditions, and reduce avoidable emergency department utilization and hospital transfers.
Eligibility: Respondents must be authorized to conduct business and remain in good standing, maintain a FEIN and UEI, and demonstrate capacity to provide tele-geriatric and/or geriatric psychiatry consultation services in Maine. Respondents must maintain appropriately licensed physicians and/or Advanced Practice Professionals and support provider onboarding, training, workflow integration, reporting, quality improvement, utilization monitoring, and care coordination activities. Respondents must comply with applicable MaineCare, Medicare, commercial payer, privacy, security, payer-of-last-resort, and state and federal requirements.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website
PROVIDERS
Provider-to-Provider Specialty Consultations
Telehealth Expansion: Provider-to-Provider
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Project Details
The Maine Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is expanding access to specialty expertise by implementing a statewide provider-to-provider synchronous consultation program. This initiative enables rural primary care providers to connect with specialists in real time through secure telehealth technology ("curbside consults"), allowing clinicians to receive timely guidance without requiring patients to travel or wait for specialty appointments.
Who We're Serving
This project is designed to support Maine-based:
- Rural primary care providers and practices,
- Critical Access Hospitals,
- Rural hospitals,
- Community health centers,
- Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and
- Other rural healthcare organizations.
The program ultimately benefits patients living in rural Maine by helping primary care providers access specialty expertise quickly, improving local care while reducing unnecessary referrals, travel, and delays in treatment.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Support implementation of up to 1,000 provider-to-provider specialty consultations per month.
- Impact: Improve access to specialty expertise, strengthen primary care capacity, reduce unnecessary specialty referrals, improve continuity of care, and allow more patients to receive treatment closer to home.
- Baseline: Rural providers often experience long wait times and limited access to specialists, resulting in delayed diagnosis, unnecessary travel, and fragmented care. This initiative addresses those barriers through immediate clinical consultation.
Funding Details
Objective: Enable rural primary care organizations and ACO partners to adopt standardized statewide real-time synchronous and asynchronous provider-to-provider specialty consultation workflows, improving timely access to specialists, clinical decision-making, care coordination, local management of appropriate conditions, and reducing unnecessary referrals, delays, and patient travel.
Eligibility: Participating organizations should serve rural Maine providers or underserved populations; have secure technology and clinical workflow capacity for real-time consultations and/or eConsults; support provider onboarding, training, adoption, documentation, referrals, escalation, and care coordination; and participate in required utilization, access, quality, performance, privacy/security, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting activities. Preference may be given to applicants currently serving rural, underserved, uninsured, and/or MaineCare populations.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Objective: Provide scalable statewide provider-to-provider specialty consultation services that expand timely specialty access for primary care providers in rural Maine. The synchronous track will deliver, direct, real-time specialist recommendations; the asynchronous eConsult track will deliver timely documented recommendations, both strengthening clinical decisions and care coordination while reducing unnecessary referrals and delays.
Eligibility: Respondents must be authorized to operate and in good standing, maintain a FEIN and UEI, and demonstrate qualified telehealth/digital-health vendor capacity; a network of appropriately trained, Maine-licensed specialists; secure synchronous and/or asynchronous technology; defined routing, response, documentation, and escalation standards; statewide implementation and onboarding capacity; payer-of-last-resort controls; applicable MaineCare and billing capability; HIPAA/privacy/security safeguards; and utilization, timeliness, quality, outcome, monitoring, and performance-reporting capability.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website
Teledentistry
Telehealth Expansion: Provider-to-Provider
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Project Details
The Maine Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is expanding access to oral health expertise through a statewide teledentistry initiative that connects school-based and primary care oral health providers with licensed dental professionals for timely consultation and clinical guidance.
Who We're Serving
This program is intended to support Maine-based:
- Rural primary care practices,
- School-based oral health programs,
- Community health centers,
- Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and
- Other rural healthcare organizations providing oral health services.
The project ultimately benefits children, and adolescents, living in rural Maine by reducing delays in accessing dental expertise, minimizing unnecessary travel, and improving coordination between medical and dental providers.
Anticipated Reach & Impact
- Reach: Support implementation of up to 500 teledentistry consultations per month through participating rural healthcare organizations.
- Impact: Improve timely access to dental expertise, strengthen collaboration between medical and dental providers, reduce unnecessary referrals and travel, and support earlier identification and management of oral health concerns.
- Baseline: Many rural communities currently experience limited access to dental providers due to workforce shortages, geographic distance, and long wait times for specialty consultation. The initiative aims to bridge these gaps through virtual provider-to-provider consultation.
Funding Details
Objective: Integrate asynchronous provider-to-provider teledentistry into routine clinical and community-based workflows to expand oral health expertise for rural and underserved Maine communities, strengthen referral pathways and care coordination, and promote sustainable adoption and use.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants must be legally operating in Maine with a UEI; be a licensed dental practice, dental provider organization, or oral health program delivering direct clinical services in Maine; use appropriately licensed dental providers, actively serve MaineCare members; demonstrate teledentistry workflow, referral, documentation, care-coordination, technology, connectivity, imaging, privacy, and security capacity; and participate in onboarding, training, monthly de-identified reporting, monitoring, evaluation, and quality-improvement activities. Preference may be given to applicants currently serving rural, underserved, uninsured, and/or MaineCare populations.
Funding Type: Grant
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Submittable
Objective: Establish a standardized statewide asynchronous provider-to-provider teledentistry service that expands access to Maine-licensed dental expertise, supports timely clinical decision-making and care coordination, strengthens referral pathways, and increases access to preventive and specialty oral health services in rural and underserved communities.
Eligibility: Respondents must be authorized to conduct business and in good standing, maintain a FEIN and UEI, provide a secure teledentistry platform and sufficient network of Maine-licensed dentists and specialists, and demonstrate teledentistry service delivery, provider onboarding, workflow integration, referral coordination, reporting, monitoring, and statewide operational capacity. Respondents must comply with applicable telehealth, privacy, security, payer-of-last-resort, and state and federal requirements. Billing and payer enrollment apply when the respondent directly provides or bills for reimbursable clinical services.
Funding Type: Partner Service Agreement (PSA)
Important Dates:
- Opens: TBD
- Closes: TBD
How to Apply: Website