It’s long been known that the healthcare resources in the rural communities do not match what is available in the urban centers. Ultimately, this could be part of what plays into rural life expectancy not matching that of the people living in more populated areas.
Ultimately, there are many factors that lead to life expectancy, not the least of which is genetics, but the American Journal of Preventative Medicine published a study recently that says the disparity between the urban and rural expectancy has grown since 1990. Image management could be part of what’s increasing that gap.
While people in metropolitan areas are experiencing an increased life expectancy, this is not happening in the rural areas, according to the study by Dr. Gopal Singh. People are succumbing to more injuries (a possible side effect of the agrarian lifestyle where contact with heavy machinery is commonplace), lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Singh said in his study that the rural black population that is also poor has the life expectancy of a white person of four decades ago. One possible reason for this is that the advancements we’ve seen in technology that assist us in our healthcare goals are not making it out to the rural areas, particularly where the population is poor and a minority.
Rural areas not only suffer from a lack of monetary resources, they also have a smaller pool of professionals from which to choose. This means that specialists who might be readily available in the city are not in rural hospitals or critical care centers. Expensive equipment is also not making its way out into the rural areas, including various IT equipment that can be used to better transfer health records from the rural healthcare facility to bigger medical centers in the city.
While most major medical centers have adopted cloud-based PACS that allow for sharing medical images and other medical data, the conversion rate has been slower for the rural communities. Some of the solutions are simply too complex for the IT staff on hand to manage and do not come close to fitting the budget of the rural facility.
Image management is certainly an issue here, particularly when it comes to transferring data from the rural healthcare facility to the specialists located far away. Image management is important because medical images are often the first line of defense in not only finding out what issues are affecting the patient, but also coming up with a course of treatment, quickly, that will give the patient a chance at recovering.
Fortunately, there is a company working to find a solution for the rural facilities that fit their limited budgets, but give them all the benefits that patients in the urban centers enjoy.
OffSite Image Management, Inc., is founded and staffed by professionals who have their eye on the welfare of the rural communities. They’ve already reached out and touched many with their various solutions, including top-notch cloud-based PACS that provide all the benefits that patients have enjoyed for years in the bigger cities of America. Contact us today and learn about our competitive rates.