Unfortunately, this system wasn’t extremely effective, as many discharged patients found themselves back in hospitals shortly after leaving with complications, relapses and other issues. This was a problem for the health of the patient, as well as the payer community, which would have to pay for multiple visits or stays in the hospital.

As we discussed in a previous post, the federal government put a program in place to reduce readmissions and curb the cost of healthcare. In the new system, hospitals are fined from the government if patients are readmitted to a hospital unnecessarily within 30 days of discharge.

Between these new readmission fines and an overall desire to keep patients healthier, it’s becoming abundantly clear that the old system of giving a patient discharge instructions and sending them on their way is no longer acceptable or sustainable. But thanks to new technologies, there are other options.

The proliferation of tablet computers and Internet connected devices, as well as the rise of cloud-based video teleconferencing (VTC) solutions, is opening new doors for the continued treatment and home care of patients when they leave the hospital’s walls.

New applications, such as Vivify Health’s cloud-based platform, automate patient care and bring the patient’s care team into the home, reducing the need for the patient to go to the hospital. Using these applications, a patient’s care team can provide health coaching, conduct health measurements and automate patient monitoring through individually-customized care plans, health surveys and vital measurements. Configurable alerts can even identify when vital signs reach certain thresholds and engage caregivers when attention is needed.

At the 2013 American Telemedicine Association Conference, Vivify announced that they will be integrating Polycom’s video collaboration into their Software as a Service Remote Care Management Platform. This adds additional engagement opportunities by enabling patients to meet face-to-face with their care team including doctors, specialists and other healthcare professionals. Combined, these solutions vastly improve the care delivery model and get healthcare professionals more engaged in the continued care of the patient.

Patients will now be able to see videos better detailing their discharge instructions and other educational content on tablets, laptops and other Internet-enabled devices. Patient information, vitals, and alerts will be transmitted in real time to the cloud based portal for follow-up or intervention. Patients that are in need of help will be able to get in front of a doctor and receive assistance via VTC without having to go back to the hospital. It’s almost as if the care team is there, in the patient’s home.

In addition to helping keep discharged patients from re-entering hospitals and helping to battle readmission rates, these solutions can also benefit another expensive and widespread issue in our country – chronic health conditions.

Conditions such as Congestive Heart Failure, pneumonia, diabetes and more, require constant management, frequent care and repeat check-ups. Giving patients access to solutions that can help keep medical professionals apprised of their condition and connecting them with doctors via video should they need assistance can dramatically reduce the number of trips they make to the doctor’s office.

The integration of VTC solutions into the cloud-based applications that are driving patient engagement is helping to better connect patients with their care teams and bring doctors directly into a patient’s home. By better educating patients, keeping care teams apprised of their condition and connecting them with their care team via video, these new technologies can keep patients out of hospitals, cut down readmission rates and ultimately improve the overall health of patients.

Unfortunately, even with programs available for them like the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training Grants Program (TAACCCT) and the Rural Utilities Service’s Distance Learning and Telemedicine Loan and Grant Program (RUS DLT), some organizations remain hesitant to apply for grants.

This is especially true in rural areas where there are smaller hospitals, colleges and K-12 schools that could benefit from VTC solutions, but struggle to purchase them. Unlike large hospitals, colleges and universities, these organizations don’t have their own dedicated grant writers whose sole job is to establish a strategy, identify programs and write applications for grants. Without these specialized staff members, smaller organizations get nervous about the process of applying, and the potential for audits.

For small organizations that are nervous about applying for grants, such as the TAACCCT and the RUS DLT, it’s essential to seek out help, and be strategic.

Many smaller organizations in rural areas are unaware that grant help is available, but it is. Some vendors have specialized grant teams, such as the Polycom Grants Assistance Program, that can come in, offer a writer and help the organization get a grant.

These writers take time to develop a relationship with the organization, get to understand their specific pain points and challenges, and work to identify their needs. They then use the knowledge of the organization and their experience in the industry to help the organization apply for grant programs.

These grant teams can also help organizations establish a grant strategy.

Many smaller organizations have to spend this fiscal year’s funds by the end of the year. This leads to random spending without a plan or strategy. Grant teams can help them think about their purchases and weave them into the scope of upcoming grant programs. They can even identify opportunities where spending could serve as a match to get a grant that can double their money.

By working with a grant team, small organizations can overcome their concerns and apprehensions about applying for grant programs. They can also receive the guidance, strategic thinking and knowledge they need to be sure money isn’t being left on the table and the best equipment, that suits the organization’s needs, is acquired.

But rural areas face other challenges than just offering a quality education to their young people and quality healthcare to their citizens. One particular challenge is immensely important and timely today – the economy.

Many small towns and rural areas are struggling in this difficult economy. Especially areas that relied on industries that are only starting to recover in our country, such as manufacturing.

As jobs move away and an industry’s footprint in an area shrinks, a local community’s workforce winds up trained in skills and abilities that don’t necessarily translate into other jobs. This results in a high number of unemployed and underemployed citizens, that don’t have the skills and abilities necessary to attract the employees of today and tomorrow, or fit into the vacancies that existing employers are looking to fill.

The key to addressing this situation lies in job training and education. Unfortunately, experts necessary for training adults in new skills and abilities may not be present in that particular region. Also, adult education has its own unique challenges since students often have additional responsibilities that dominate their time and attention. This is where VTC solutions come in.

Utilizing VTC solutions in their existing community college system, a rural municipality can bring in necessary professors and experts, even if they’re not locally available. This provides community colleges with the opportunity to tailor their educational offerings and deliver degree and training programs that provide students with the skills and abilities needed to compete for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

The flexibility that VTC solutions can provide is also extremely important since many of these students will be unemployed or underemployed adults with responsibilities and tight schedules. VTC solutions enable professors and teachers to record educational content and make it available on-demand. Students can then digest the content when their schedules allow, such as after their workday ends, or after they put their kids to bed.

With down economies, citizens in need of services and with tax revenue low, rural areas may find it difficult to afford the VTC solutions that can ultimately train their citizens and help them reenter the workforce. Luckily, there’s a grant program for that as well.

The Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training Grants Program (TAACCCT) is all about economic growth, helping to strengthen the economy and turning the US back into a global leader.

The program looks at a given geography where large employers are either exporting jobs or importing workers to fill skilled vacancies because they can’t find the skilled workers they need. That area is then given the financial assistance needed to identify unemployed or underemployed citizens and use the community college system to provide the degrees, skill sets and training necessary to creating a career ladder that generates a skilled workforce.

In today’s economy, a skilled workforce and job training are more important than they ever were before. New and growing industries, such as clean energy and healthcare, are in need of skilled employees. Getting unemployed and underemployed citizens the education they need to compete for these jobs can be the difference between an area’s economy declining, staying flat or growing. VTC solutions can be an essential part of adult education, and the TAACCCT program can help regions and community college systems implement these necessary technologies.

In our next post, I’ll look at some of the issues keeping organizations from applying for grants, the different services available to them and provide some best practices and tips for successfully applying for grant programs.

It’s not that things are stacked up unfairly against them, or that the game is rigged to make healthcare access and the education opportunities in these areas inferior to those in major metropolitan and suburban centers. The truth is it’s just a natural result of being a small town in a rural area.

When it comes to education, small towns in rural areas have to abide by the same state and federal mandates that require teaching particular subjects and the passing of certain standardized testing. Unfortunately, small towns just don’t have the enormous student bodies and numbers of teachers that large city schools have.

The entire K-12 population for a small town may be less than 500 students. The town simply can’t afford to employ a significant teacher population but is required to offer the same courses as urban schools. How can that town afford the staff to offer special education, advanced languages, AP, arts and other specialized courses when it only has 100 total high school students and only a small percentage of them may require or request those courses?

The same issue impacts healthcare access in these areas. Doctors and specialists often flock to major metropolitan areas. Even if they chose to work for hospitals in small towns, it’s doubtful that the hospital could afford to employ a staff of specialists who may only see a handful of patients in a year.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts on Public Sector View, video teleconferencing (VTC) solutions are the answer to these problems. VTC can deliver specialists from a big city into the examination rooms of a small town’s hospital. They can enable a group of small town schools or school districts to share one, centralized education resource for the instruction of advanced or niche courses. They can ultimately enable schools and hospitals to offer specialized services that they couldn’t previously afford to offer.

But how do they afford the VTC solutions?

In addition to new technologies that are driving down the cost of VTC implementations, federal grant programs have been put in place to help rural communities acquire VTC solutions that help them improve their education and healthcare systems. The most notable of these new grant programs is the Rural Utilities Service’s (RUS) Distance Learning and Telemedicine Loan and Grant Program (DLT).

According to the RUS DLT Website, the program “was designed specifically to meet the educational and health care needs of rural America. Through loans, grants and loan/grant combinations, advanced telecommunications technologies provide enhanced learning and health care opportunities for rural residents.”

These grants and loans essentially provide money for equipment and requisite services to connect rural organizations with their urban counterparts. This connection ultimately delivers the services that rural towns don’t have the means to offer in their schools and hospitals to citizens via video, whether those are advanced language classes or access to a cardiologist. To learn more about RUS DLT grants, watch our recent Webinar, “RUS DLT funding – Helping Rural Organizations Bridge the Digital Divide.”

Just as education doesn’t end when the school bell rings, the benefits of VTC extend beyond the classroom and hospital. In our next few posts, I’ll look at another grant program that rural areas can utilize to improve their economy and the different services available to states, municipalities and organizations looking for help acquiring government grants.

Organizations from these verticals have already joined our large federal following, and The Public Sector View will be a robust forum to exchange information, best practices, and uses of unified communications (UC) across the public sector. We gave the site a facelift to go along with our expanded coverage – we hope you like it!

In addition to reading the latest articles, you now have the ability to search on content that is specific to a unique vertical.  We’ve added new premium content to the Resource Center that can help you evaluate and implement UC, and we’ve listed every public sector industry event where we are demonstrating our Polycom solutions.  You can also follow our authors and subject matter experts on Twitter and LinkedIn, and we encourage you to engage with us!

So welcome to the Public Sector View – your go-to site for the latest in collaboration and best practices for federal, state and local government, education and healthcare organizations.

Thank you for your continued interest and as always, your feedback is welcome!

I’ve seen estimates of over 6,000 attendees, but even that might be low. Obviously, many of the policy changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act are driving high interest in the efficiencies to be gained through the increased use of video in healthcare. The exhibit hall has been so packed, I think it’s pulled attendees away from the program sessions!

Here at the Polycom booth, I’ve seen attendees three rows deep waiting for demonstrations of the Polycom® RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite. This service requires no on premises equipment except a browser and a web camera to provide reliable, enterprise-grade video for telehealth.

The conversations I’ve been part of have run the gamut regarding telehealth and new innovations. Many of our visitors are just getting off the ground with their telehealth initiatives – they recognize the potential for better care and for revenue generation and want to know the easiest, smartest way to get started. For them the simplicity of our cloud offering is very exciting.

I’ve also taken part in conversations with Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors looking to add video capability to their patient portals. To do this they are considering incorporating the Polycom API.

Two new Polycom alliance companies have positively contributed to our attendance at this event. Robotics company Anybots Inc. provided a very humanistic robot named “QB” that has been a huge success in our booth area. It’ very approachable in appearance and it demonstrates a tablet running the Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile software for secure High Definition video.

Our other alliance announced here at ATA is with Vivify Health Inc., a home health patient monitoring company. Together with Polycom, they are delivering new video collaboration solutions that will improve patient wellness and prevent unnecessary rehospitalization.

Change happens slowly in a huge, highly complex sector like healthcare. But if this ATA show is any indication, the future is now for the wide spread adoption of video collaboration tools that improve the health of patients, AND the efficiency of the healthcare system.

New research from the Community College Research Center (CCRC), however, reveals that students still prefer face-to-face instruction over online courses for certain areas of study. According to the report, students will opt for campus courses for areas of study they consider “difficult, interesting or important.”

The CCRC reports that over 97% of all two-year institutions offer some online courses and a growing number of students (22 percent of the sector’s overall enrollment in 2008) take at least one course online. Yet findings reveal that only three percent of community college students are enrolled in an entirely online degree program, meaning almost all two-year students are still relying on traditional, classroom-based courses.

As part of the study, researchers conducted interviews with students who have taken both traditional and online courses and found the majority felt they did not learn the course material as well when they took it online. For most students, they credit this sentiment to “reduced teacher explanation and interaction.”

While students acknowledge the many benefits of online courses—namely flexibility and convenience—the study also reports an overwhelming majority of students who agree that student-instructor interaction online is “more distant and impersonal.”

One way to dispel students’ concerns and enhance the student-instructor interaction online is by adopting video teleconferencing (VTC) as part of the online course curriculum. Collaborative video solutions can enable students taking online courses to have the same level of interaction and explanation as a course hosted on campus, while also providing the more personal learning experience students seek from face-to-face instruction.

Over the past few months on Fed UC, we’ve discussed some of the many ways the education community is embracing VTC to overcome a host of challenges and enhance the classroom experience for teachers and students alike. We’ve already seen how VTC is connecting students from different countries and cultures, delivering classes to students in geographically diverse locations, and transporting students to locations half a world away through virtual fieldtrips. Furthermore, VTC has proven highly effective at increasing collaboration and cost savings in the areas of healthcare, private enterprise, and the public sector.

While the CCRC research report may seem to indicate at first glance that students are voicing their preference for traditional course instruction over more modern online courses, a deeper look at the study reveals that the students are actually voicing their desire for a deeper, more collaborative experience in their education, regardless of how they access it. Additionally, the popularity of massive online open courses, or MOOCs, also demonstrates the value students and educational institutions alike find in online courses.

In the end, the study reveals an important lesson: a student’s educational experience—from the interaction with the instructor to the information learned and lessons taught—should be uniform, regardless of whether the student is physically on campus or not. And now, thanks to VTC, colleges and universities can make that dream a reality for students everywhere.

The USDLA was the first nonprofit distance learning association in the United States to support distance learning research, development and praxis across the complete arena of education, training and communications. Their annual conference is an opportunity for professionals in the distance learning community to share ideas, learn about distance learning programs and products, and gain a better understanding of the field.

It’s also the venue for the presentation of the annual Distance Learning Awards. These awards acknowledge major accomplishments in distance learning and highlight the distance learning instructors, programs, and professionals that have demonstrated extraordinary achievements.

The Polycom team was excited to see one of our customers, VUC Storstrøm, recognized with the USDLA International Award for Best Practices for Distance Learning Programming – especially considering the important and life-changing work that the organization is doing in their native Denmark. The European Commission is funding VUC Storstrom and looking to partner with universities from across Europe to grow the program.

Denmark has a program called the General Adult Education Program, which also commonly referred to as the “second chance program.” This program allows students that didn’t complete school to finish their degree, learn new skills and make themselves more employable. Most of the individuals that take advantage of this program are adult learners between the ages of 18 to 30.

VUC Storstrøm is one of the 30 adult education centers that offer classes through the General Adult Education Program. It has 180 teachers that serve 5,000 students across five branch campuses. Unfortunately, giving these students access to classes is difficult for two different reasons. First, the students are adult learners that have responsibilities outside of the classroom. Second, many of the students in the Zealand region of Denmark live in areas that are geographically isolated from the campuses, including a group of islands connected by bridges and ferries.

To help overcome this issue, VUC Storstrøm introduced their Global Classroom Program. This platform combines traditional classroom teaching with distance learning and parallel classes.

In this format, students attend classes on campus two to three days a week, depending on their schedules. Using interactive whiteboards and video teleconferencing (VTC) solutions, teachers are able to instruct two parallel classes at once in different geographic locations, giving students more flexibility and helping to reduce travel. Finally, students can use distance learning to watch recorded lectures and educational content. This is accomplished by recording parallel classes and making them accessible on the learning platform to be digested on the student’s own schedule.

Between 2009 and 2012, the Global Classroom Program improved access to education for 591 students and continues to grow in size and scope. The program is also credited for helping to create a more skilled and educated workforce in the Zealand region of Denmark.

We’d like to take the opportunity to congratulate VUC Storstrøm on their innovative and exceptional use of VTC technology to increase access to a quality education. We’d also like to congratulate them on their well deserved honor – the USDLA International Award for Best Practices for Distance Learning Programming.

Internet2 is a community of research, academia, industry and government leaders who create and collaborate via innovative technologies. Their annual membership conference is an opportunity for these innovative academia luminaries to gather and discuss the trends, topics and best practices shaping the way education professionals communicate, inspire and instruct.

Although video teleconferencing (VTC) may still be gaining champions and seeing increased adoption in some industries, this innovative group of educators is no stranger to the technology. In fact, as we’ve discussed in previous posts on Fed UC, the education community as a whole has been embracing VTC to overcome a host of challenges, and seeing many benefits.

As a community of educators on the cutting edge of instructional technologies, Internet2 and its membership are well aware of the positives that video can deliver to the classroom. Whether connecting students from different countries or cultures, delivering classes to learners that can’t physically attend, or transporting students to distant lands of discovery via virtual fieldtrips, the value of VTC is understood and embraced by Internet2 and its membership.

Instead, where VTC is going, and what it will mean for students and teachers in the future dominated discussion at this year’s event. And where is VTC going? To the cloud.

Based on conversations that we had with educators and decision makers from academia at this year’s conference, browser-based collaboration solutions hosted in the cloud, lecture capture, are some of the most eagerly-anticipated and coveted new technologies.

These solutions will essentially make it easy for educators to communicate and collaborate via video with other education professionals and students via a wide range of VTC endpoints. By utilizing video cloud solutions, educators could initiate a video conference with colleagues or students by simply sending them a link via email, chat or social network.

In addition to increasing ease of use, video cloud solutions also increase accessibility by enabling educators to connect their enterprise-grade VTC solutions with a wide variety of endpoints capable of accessing Skype, Facebook and Google Talk. This can include laptops, tablet computers, smartphone and standards-based room VTC systems. This makes it easier to communicate and collaborate via video with students, who may have access to disparate endpoints, such as laptops or various different mobile devices.

Ultimately, video cloud solutions are driving today’s innovative learning environments, which allow faculty and students to be anywhere with an intelligent device and access educational content via multiple modalities.

This also makes it easy for teachers to use such devices to record and host lectures and other educational content online for students to access via computer, tablet or smartphone when convenient for them. Video on Demand (VOD) for lecture capture – when facilitated through a BYOD infrastructure – opens a new world of collaborative opportunities, one with greater impact, wider reach and higher student retention.

Finally, video cloud solutions make it easier overall for education institutions to implement VTC. Many education institutions just want to buy a service and connect without having to acquire and implement an expensive and complex IT infrastructure. Video cloud solutions enable the ability to purchase Video as a Service (VaaS), instead of purchasing and installing dedicated hardware.

New technologies are constantly emerging and reshaping education and access to information. First was the computer, then the Internet. Now, VTC solutions are shaping and changing the way students learn and fast becoming an essential technology inside and outside the classroom. This is why, as we saw in the Internet2 Conference, technologies can increase the access to VTC solutions and make them easier to use, such as video cloud solutions, are poised for rapid adoption in the near future.

This year’s event, which is themed, “A virtual paradise- bridging the islands of innovation,” is bringing together educators, decision makers, technology vendors and other education thought leaders to discuss the new technologies and best practices shaping the way we teach young people today.

The use of video to empower the connected classroom continues to be a major focus for attendees at this year’s event. We continue to hear educators discuss using video for virtual fieldtrips and delivering guest lecturers into their classrooms.

But the connected classroom and video teleconferencing (VTC) solutions are delivering more than just field trips and experts to the class. They’re also connecting students with their counterparts thousands of miles away.

Global Nomads is present at the conference and has been demonstrating how VTC is bringing students from America together with those from places as far away as Yemen and Afghanistan. This connectivity and collaboration not only helps to teach students about different cultures and helps them to learn new languages, but also brings their lessons to life. By engaging with students from other countries, pupils can hear first-hand accounts of events in world history and learn how they fundamentally changed lives. Ultimately, this connectivity is bringing a new and exciting dimension to traditional classroom lessons.

Educators may be excited about how video is empowering the connected classroom, but they’re even more excited about how it’s connecting students outside of the connected classroom.

Today’s students have unprecedented access to a wide range of mobile devices, from laptops, to smartphones, to tablet computers. By embracing “bring your own device” initiatives, or BYOD for short, educators are taking advantage of the technology that students already have to change how they teach a new generation of student. This is all possible because of the introduction of new mobile video applications that turn mobile devices into HD VTC endpoints.

For example, students that play sports or participate in other extracurricular activities often find themselves missing class or sacrificing study time for practice and events. Utilizing mobile video applications on a student’s laptop, tablet or smartphone could enable them to participate in class even if they’re on the road competing in a tournament.

BYOD can also help teachers better prepare students for the workforce. Today’s employers are looking for personnel that can work in teams effectively, even if those teams are distributed.

Traditionally, working in collaborative teams is something that is reserved for older students, since they are better equipped to meet outside of the classroom to participate and collaborate. However, utilizing mobile video collaboration solutions on BYOD devices, students can more easily connect after class, enabling teachers to assign more team assignments and projects, even at a younger age. This means students are better prepared for today’s distributed workplace as soon as they enter the workforce.

If this year’s 2013 TxDLA Conference is any indication, the connected classroom is the future of education and truly effective for keeping students engaged and excited about learning. But it doesn’t end in the classroom. Now, VTC is breaking down the schoolhouse walls, bringing students together after class and helping students get an education even when they can’t physically be present in the classroom.