FCC Seeks to Aid Broadband-Enabled Rural Healthcare, Gillett Says

The FCC wants to simplify and streamline the process and reduce the administrative costs of participating in the agency’s rural healthcare program, which funds eligible healthcare providers for telecom services, Gillett said, citing the agency’s pilot rural healthcare funding program designed to facilitate the creation of a nationwide broadband network for healthcare. The pilot program has enabled remote access to medical specialists for rural communities and created networks in states with a severe shortage of healthcare professionals, she said. The agency has learned that one of the biggest advantages of the program is the ability of healthcare providers to work together to create a statewide and/or regional networks, she said. The agency now has a better understanding of the needs of healthcare providers, including the gaps they experience in the availability and affordability of broadband services and how those gaps affect the adoption of healthcare services, she said. The FCC wants to help rural healthcare providers use broadband connections to provide quality healthcare at affordable rates, she said, citing telemedicine and telehealth as major areas of innovation, job creation and entrepreneurship.

Rural Utilities Service Deputy Administrator Jessica Zufolo emphasized the need for interagency coordination and better ways to leverage federal dollars. She cited RUS’ Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) program, which funds telecom-enabled information, audio and video equipment and related technologies to extend educational and medical services into rural locations. But having infrastructure in place isn’t enough. Zufolo urged better delivery of healthcare services to rural communities and better medical training programs.

The ability of hospitals to exchange and share healthcare information could significantly lower healthcare costs, said Michael Sims, chief financial officer of the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN). Fractured clinical information is a major obstacle to better care, he said. Sims said Delaware was the first to enroll all acute care hospitals in statewide community health records. All of the state’s acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and 86 percent of the state’s healthcare providers have participated in the DHIN, which offers “directed” exchange of health information that enables point-to-point electronic delivery of clinical results to an ordering provider, he said. DHIN also aggregates healthcare data across time and care settings into one searchable database, he said. The ability to search for existing medical results has led to a dramatic reduction in the ordering of high costs lab and radiology studies, according to Sims.

Outdated infrastructure is a barrier to deploying advanced telecom services at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, said Lorelei Stellwag, director of technology. “Our hospitals are very old,” she said. Many of the hospital’s facilities were not designed for deployment of advanced telecom equipment, she said, but the hospital has deployed broadband networks that have enabled on-demand video language services. Interpreter services at the hospital are provided in more than 175 languages including American Sign Language for all patient appointments and procedures, she said. Meanwhile, current regulations that require health providers to obtain multiple state licenses and adhere to diverse and sometimes conflicting state medical practice rules, is another barrier to implementation of telemedicine, said Jon Linkous, head of the American Telemedicine Association.