MTA Commentary–Rural Healthcare Networks

I thought you might be interested in this month’s MTA Commentary, which discusses the opportunities—and risks—of establishing rural health care networks. Expanding telemedicine and telehealth opportunities through broadband technology can bring substantial benefit rural communities, if done right. If not done right, investment in network infrastructure that is designed to benefit all of us may be threatened, while healthcare networks could find themselves operating isolated, expensive specialty networks that would require continuing infusions of public resources.

MTA urges healthcare network projects to work collaboratively with private networks to develop applications and appropriate connectivity for healthcare facilities, and all others who benefit from an interconnected broadband platform.

Please do not hesitate to call/reply if you have any questions or comments. And, feel free to share this commentary with anyone.

Best regards,

Geoff Feiss

Montana Telecommunications Association

406.442.4316 (office)

406.594.0424 (mobile)

Serving Montana’s telecommunications industry for 55 years

***

MTA Commentary: Rural Healthcare Networks

May 13, 2009

We continually are reminded of the benefits that broadband
telecommunications technology brings to the economic development of our lives,
our communities, our state and indeed, the nation.

For example, in the entertainment arena, we take for granted now the fact
that we can download music or television shows or movies onto a variety of
devices at home. We routinely surf the net to get information that not long ago
required a trip to the library. We go shopping at virtual stores anywhere in the
world, without leaving our homes. Or, looking at that scenario the other way, we
can sell products and services to anyone anywhere in the world without actually
having to establish a physical presence, thereby vastly expanding markets with
minimal expense and effort.

Broadband communications in the workplace enable us to attend
meetings and obtain information that otherwise would have required travel and
other expenses that may have rendered such opportunities prohibitive just a few
years ago. We stream hearings or public meetings; we “attend” webinars and
participate in conferences—all without moving from our office chair. Not only do
these broadband applications vastly expand our access to knowledge and our
productivity, but by substituting cyber-time for travel-time, we’re consuming fewer
natural resources and reducing our environmental footprint.

Similarly, virtual classrooms expand educational opportunities for students
and teachers alike, while preserving curricular offerings in communities that
otherwise may not be able to afford to offer courses that a larger school district
may offer. Students take courses offered far away, without leaving their
classrooms. Teachers, too, take on-line masters degree courses without leaving
their jobs.

Another valuable use of broadband connectivity can be found in the
healthcare industry. A number of broadband applications can enable rural
healthcare facilities to offer a host of services without the actual physical presence of specialists on site. For example, X-rays taken at a rural healthcare
clinic can be sent to a remote location, read and interpreted by a radiologist, and
returned back to the rural clinic where there is no resident radiologist. Other
broadband telemedicine applications enable large amounts of data to be stored
and transferred—in a secure health information exchange network—so that a
patient’s records may be accessible by healthcare providers wherever the patient
happens to need care, rather than only where the patient resides.

Facilitating telemedicine applications, in fact, is a national priority. In
2006, for example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established
a “pilot program to…bring the benefits of innovative telehealth and …
telemedicine services to those areas of the country where the need for those
benefits is most acute.”

Enter the Health Information Exchange of Montana, or HIEM, which has
been granted funding under the FCC’s rural health care pilot program to
implement “a bold plan to build fiber to each [participating health care] facility” on
its proposed northwest Montana healthcare network. This pilot program presents
a great opportunity for health care consumers in rural Montana. Or not. As
usual, the devil is in the details.

In its application and recent reports to the FCC, the HIEM pilot project has
stated that “parts of northwest and north central Montana have no fiber
connectivity,” and that Montana remains isolated from other national healthcare
and research networks such as Internet 2 and National Lambda Rail. A map
included in HIEM’s application shows no fiber between Kalispell and Missoula,
for example; or from Cut Bank to Fairfield. Another map indicates that the
nearest connection to Internet 2 or Lambda Rail is in Denver or Salt Lake. None
of these assertions is true, however. HIEM’s application also indicates that it
plans to replace existing connections to healthcare facilities with its own network
connections.

The good news is that there’s great opportunity in expanding the
availability and affordability of healthcare services to rural communities through the intelligent deployment of broadband-based healthcare networks.

Unfortunately, there’s substantial risk involved in how such networks are
developed. The economic landscape is littered with the corpses of failed
telecommunications network projects launched by non-telecom enterprises with
the best of intentions only to find out that building, operating, and maintaining
telecommunications networks did not fall within the enterprise’s core
competencies. Healthcare providers may be tempted to build duplicative network
facilities and remove assets from the public telecom infrastructure. This would
be a mistake. Investment in networks would be threatened.

Meanwhile,
healthcare networks would find themselves operating isolated, expensive
specialty networks that would require continuing infusions of public resources.
There’s a solution to this potential conflict. Healthcare projects should
work collaboratively with private networks to develop applications and
appropriate connectivity for healthcare facilities, and all others who benefit from
an interconnected broadband platform.

While it still is not clear which direction the HIEM project will take, it is
clear that there’s a lot more at stake here than just healthcare consumers.

# # #

contact: Geoff Feiss, General Manager

Montana Telecommunications Association

406.442.4316

[email protected]