Transforming Indiana Healthcare With Telemedicine

By: Cullen McCarty - President and CEO, Smithville Digital

What will it take for Indiana to truly transform itself? With success after success of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation as a barometer, there remains no question that the economic transformation of Indiana is underway.

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With $7.9 billion in new capital investment set to come into the state, Hoosiers will benefit from new job creation for years to come.

But as Indiana increasingly comes into view by site selectors, two key issues also emerge: the availability of healthcare resources and the health quality of the Hoosier workforce. For a state that is home to top hospitals and nationally ranked medical schools, this would seem to be a no-brainer.

Despite this seeming advantage, 66 of Indiana�s 92 counties were federally designated in the last national census as medically underserved areas or areas with shortages of key health professionals.

These critical gaps in Hoosier healthcare could quickly be shored up. The answer, perhaps surprisingly, lies in an accelerated implementation of technology that already exists: telemedicine.

Synchronous telemedicine � where doctors and patients can meet online in real time � offers the capacity to rapidly extend critical medical resources throughout the state. Its success is already proven, as evidenced by programs deployed at the Riley Hospital for Children and St. Vincents. Using fiber-based connectivity on the Indiana Digital Gateway from Smithville Digital, Bloomington Hospital has brought lifesaving cancer treatment to rural areas of southern Indiana.

How powerful is the potential for telemedicine? Purdue�s Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering recently put it this way: �The day may be approaching where failure to deploy a telemedicine consult constitutes lack of due care.�

For about two million Hoosiers, roughly a third of Indiana�s population, getting proper medical attention is becoming more and more of a serious, even life-threatening, problem. Only 13 percent of Indiana active-care physicians are actively living in and serving rural areas, the rest clustered in major Hoosier urban areas.

But the challenge can be met, and met swiftly.

As the Regenstrief Center outlined in its report �Telemedicine in Indiana,� affordable high speed broadband remains a critical barrier. That barrier is coming down with the proliferation of T-1 lines and other fiber-based connectivity that allows high-speed interactivity and transmission of secure data.

While the physical connectivity issues remain a challenge, particularly for rural areas, the state needs to address reimbursement issues for Medicaid and telemedicine. Old statutes and policies don�t recognize how telemedicine can bring critical medical resources into play, instantly defeating geographical and time issues that too often limit the availability of physicians and the subsequent level of diagnoses.

Once the physical and policy issues are resolved, a critical element remains: creating a new telemedicine culture that both medical professionals and patients can embrace. Banks know that consumers are vitally concerned about their financial records, and medical record-keeping is of even higher concern. Both doctors and patients have already expressed unease about what would happen to confidential medical records if telemedicine was to move into prominence.

Happily, both technology applications and HIPPA regulations exist that provide for private and secure online record-keeping, thus preserving critical confidentiality.

The Regenstrief Center and other telemedicine experts also now call for telemedicine issues to be introduced directly into medical school curriculum. Global medical consults, where doctors and medical professionals exchange opinions and data across national borders, already take place daily.

What�s the potential outcome for Indiana? �Telemedicine applications offer the promise of improved access to care and tremendous cost savings�and in some case even save countless lives in Indiana,� according to the Regenstrief report.

Telemedicine represents an existing technology solution that is good for the health of Hoosiers and for the continued economic growth of the state. Through physical infrastructure and development of a new cultural focus, Indiana can transform itself into a national healthcare leader.

About Smithville Digital
Headquartered in Ellettsville (near Bloomington, Indiana), Smithville Digital provides an expansive spectrum of broadband services, including full scalability across a broad 10 Gigabits of connectivity. The Indiana Digital Gateway provides data transport, online ERPs and digital imaging platforms for several major Indiana companies, including the Bloomington Hospital (www.bloomingtonhospital.org), and the West Gate @ Crane Technology Park (www.westgatecrane.com) adjacent to the $2 billion Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane, Indiana. For more information, please visit www.smithvilledigital.com. For media inquiries, please contact Michael Snyder at The MEK Group at msnyder@themekgroup.com or 317-805-4870.

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