Missouri has two major metropolitan communities that account for a large percent of its residents, but the agricultural state is largely rural. Rural communities across the nation continue to make strides to improve broadband access, as does Missouri. But along with that, the Show-Me-State is also improving its telemedicine care.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon announced last year that nearly a dozen rural hospitals throughout the state would be granted more than $260,000 to improve telemedicine and health image exchange capabilities. From the Northwest Medical Center in Albany in north Missouri to the Madison Memorial Hospital in Fredericktown in Southeast Missouri, these rural hospitals are investing in new technologies that will help them better serve their patients with health image exchange systems.
Health image exchange platforms rely on strong broadband infrastructure as most reputable vendors use web portals to exchange data and images that help doctors and technicians give a higher quality of service to their patients. Administrative costs tied to paper records and film images are much higher than the new digital imaging solutions, and they are more difficult to share across departments. But without a strong broadband backbone, the digital images shared in health image exchange platforms are too slow and can be unstable.
Health officials in Missouri agree that telemedicine is changing the face of healthcare throughout America. Rural practices are able to share their images and data with doctors in locations far from their small communities through telemedicine. For instance, a radiologist in the backwoods of the Ozarks can share his/her images with a major medical group in St. Louis or Kansas City in an instant. Specialists at those facilities can view the images and make determinations on how best to treat the patient, and the patient never has to leave the rural facility for these diagnoses.
Mr. Nixon has made several funding efforts toward rural communities for a variety of medical needs, including efforts to train more nurses in rural areas. This latest round of funding targets a specific need that the healthcare industry has as it relies on technology to bring better health image exchange services to small-town Missouri.
The health image exchange effort is tied directly to health information exchange platforms that allow for the mobilization of healthcare information electronically from one office to another, regardless of the distance. Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) are also an integral piece of this puzzle.
With nearly 1,300 critical access hospitals established across the U.S., bringing state-of-the-art technology to the most rural of our communities is a priority. Establishing these systems is not only time consuming but also cost prohibitive for many of these struggling communities. Mr. Nixon’s efforts to ease the burden are certainly helpful.
OffSite Image Management, Inc. is a company devoted to rural and critical care hospital radiology services. OffSite offers vendor neutral archiving, off site data storage and business continuity solutions, PACS, HIE through its trademarked Honeycomb DICOM system and virtual CD cloud management.