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August 26, 2009

Ryan Peters: Tech for better health

By RYAN PETERS

The Rural Health Care Pilot Program (RHCPP) is an opportunity to expand the state's health care coverage. The objective is to deliver better care to those in more remote areas of the State that don't have accessible health care facilities close by. This is an exciting direction for our health care system.

Telehealth or telemedicine is the term for this new evolving health care service. The service provides physicians with better tools to treat remote patients. Technology makes this possible with tools such as the Internet, laptop computers and personal digital assistants for documentation. Doctors will soon be able to visit rural areas and no longer be limited or tied to their clinics and health care facilities. It appears the dust will need to come off the proverbial old medicine bag as it will have a purpose again. The Rural Health Care service will be a needed luxury that many rural citizens have been without.

The key objective for telemedicine is to minimize the amount of long distance patient travel while maximizing the quality of medical care.

The Rural Health Care Initiative will fund 85 percent of this telecommunication network. This is very attractive for non-profit health care providers. The value comes helping doctors eliminate the cumbersome task of organizing health information while out in these rural areas.

Many states take advantage of their consortiums to organize and spread the costs across the members instead of having only a few health care providers bear the total cost. A consortium can be defined as two or more organizations that work together toward a common goal. Using this process, the consortium could account for the total number of members per health care provider.

Today roughly 16 percent of our GDP is spent on health care. Information is the powerful tool, especially when it comes to medical research. This fact should add value and momentum for a rural health care service network to grow. That being said, this needed funding should dovetail nicely into the federal government's new stimulus package. Health care providers should be able to put together a compelling business case and return on investment. The Michigan Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC) has a good footprint that could manage funding for the Rural Health Care process across the State of the Michigan.

The medical research component is the most exciting part of this initiative. This network will enable great medical minds to better collaborate and work as a team. Together the health care community will be able find cures and share clinical discoveries much more efficiently.

Drastic improvements in medical research are on the horizon. The beauty of this is geography will no longer be a limiting factor for the quality of future health care.

Ryan Peters is a technology journalist who can be found online at http://contactryan.wordpress.com

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