Washington, D.C. – Broadband health care networks improve
the quality and reduce the cost of delivering care in rural areas, according to
a Federal Communications Commission staff report evaluating the Commission’s
Rural Health Care Pilot Program.
The FCC staff report at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-12-1332A1.pdf
details the benefits of the Pilot program, as well as the lessons learned from
the Pilot, which supports 50 active projects in 38 states. The five largest
projects are statewide networks in California, Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina
and West Virginia, which are on target to connect over 800 health care
providers.
Broadband networks of rural and urban providers save lives
by providing rural Americans with instant access to specialized services that
are not available in rural areas, saving time that is critical in stroke care
and other emergencies. High-speed broadband networks capable of supporting
telemedicine and telehealth applications also provide rural patients access to
more routine telehealth consultations with medical specialists, efficiently
transit health records, and facilitate training of nurses and doctors.
But rural health care providers operate on thin margins, and
may not be able to afford broadband communications without assistance from the
FCC’s Rural Health Care program, the report says. The FCC launched the Pilot in
2006 to explore how best to help rural health care providers harness the power
of broadband to improve care. A map at
http://www.fcc.gov/maps/rural-health-care-pilot-program shows the location of
the pilot projects and of the health care providers participating in each project.
The experiences of those pilot projects are providing
critical information to the FCC as it considers comprehensive reform of its
Rural Health Care program. Some examples of benefits from the Pilot-funded
networks include:
- Physicians in Bacon County, Georgia saved the life of a young stroke victim by using a telemedicine connection to a specialist in Savannah in order to administer clot-busting medication
- Remote psychiatric consultations for patients in rural South Carolina hospitals that lack staff psychiatrists speeds treatment and save days of waiting in expensive emergency rooms
- Hospitals in South Dakota’s Heartland Unified Broadband Network have saved $1.2 million in expenses through electronic intensive care unit services, which reduce the number of days patients spend in ICU and the number of transfers to other hospitals
