Community Choice Bulletin
Community Choice Bulletin
102 Maple Street, Suite B
Cashmere, WA 98815
or email it to: jesus.hernandez@cwhs.com
BULLETIN ITEMS:
Item #1
Third USDA Telemedicine Grant Awarded to Community Choice
Community Choice Healthcare Network has
been awarded a $461,005
grant from the Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant
program, administered by USDA Rural Development. Grant
funds will be shared by the seven member hospitals of
Community Choice Healthcare Network, a regional non-profit
consortium of hospitals, physicians and clinics.
The participating hospitals will receive the following
amounts of matching funds:
North
Valley
Hospital
, Tonasket
$98,559
Lake Chelan
Community
Hospital
$94,355
Mid-Valley
Hospital
, Omak
$86,330
Quincy
Valley Medical Center, Quincy
$72,679
Okanogan-Douglas
District
Hospital
, Brewster
$57,717
Central
Washington
Hospital
,
Wenatchee
$37,287
Cascade Medical Center,
Leavenworth
$14,079
The grant funds will support expansion of a regional
Teleradiology project initiated with two previous USDA
Telemedicine grants of $ 421,847 in 2003 and $ 499,332 in
2004. This
year’s grant funds will also support the introduction of
Telepharmacy at
Lake Chelan
Community
Hospital
. A smaller amount
of the funds will support a Tele-interpretation pilot project
at
Mid-Valley
Hospital
in Omak and other participating hospitals and clinics
throughout the region.
“This grant will assist our area physicians and hospitals increase the
access to healthcare services, reduce the delivery cost of
those services and ultimately to continue to provide very high
quality healthcare to our communities.
In the most emergent cases, this grant will help us to
save lives!” says Tom Jones, Executive Director of
Community Choice.
USDA State Director, Jon Devaney, Field
Representative, Wess Lennum, Community Program Director, Sandi
Boughton, Area Director, Melanie Drecksel were in Wenatchee to
present a $461,005 USDA Telemedicine Grant award to Community
Choice Board members.
Community Choice Board Chair, Pat Malone, Hospital
Administrators and Board Members Larry Peterson, Mike Billing,
Dale Polla were present to receive the award.
Community Choice presented recognition plaques to the
Public Utility Districts (PUDs) of Chelan,
Douglas
and
Okanogan
Counties
for their partnership in creating and supporting the Regional
Healthcare Information Network serving North Central
Washington. The
fast speed transmission of Teleradiology and Telepharmacy data
within and outside the region is made possible by the large
bandwidth capacity of the fiber infrastructure established by
the PUDs.
Item #3
First USDA Telemedicine Grant Awarded to Community Choice
Community Choice a Wenatchee-based
regional PHCO (Physician, Hospital Community Organization) was
awarded $414,847 for use in a regional teleradiology
initiative. The
hospitals involved include Lake Chelan Community Hospital, in
Chelan; Okanogan-Douglas Hospital, in Brewster, Mid-Valley
Hospital in Omak, and North Valley Hospital, in Tonasket.
All four hospitals will use a common
teleradiology system allowing the radiology departments of all
four hospital to digitally capture images from Cat Scanners,
(CT) computed radiographic equipment (CR), magnetic resonance
imaging systems (MRI), and other radiographic modalities
capable of producing a DICOM-3 digital image.
When these images are captured, they will be
transmittable, instantly, using TCP/IP connectivity (Internet
Protocols) to, essentially, any radiologist in the World with
Internet connection. The
images will be secured by virtual Wide Area Network (WAN)
protocols to preserve HIPAA compliance, and avoid unwanted
hacker intrusion. These
images will travel through the recently deployed fiber optic
network transmission systems put in place by Chelan, Douglas,
Grant and Okanogan Counties PUDs.
The platform will allow distributed
computer servers to be placed in each one of the hospital
sites, and for disaster backup file duplication to be stored
at a remote location. Additionally,
as area radiologists typically serve more than one area
hospital, frequently at the same time, to reduce costs, the
hospitals will be able to transfer images to one another, when
a radiologist at one hospital needs to see images generated
from another hospital.
In addition to the shared teleradiology
platform, three hospitals will upgrade their X-ray systems to
include computed radiography, (CR).
This is the digital interface to radiography systems,
and will replace much of the need for X-ray film and ensuing
developing costs. Additionally,
to replace aging X-ray systems in two of the hospitals, the
grant funds, along with matching funds spent from the
hospitals’ budget will pay for new X-ray systems, which will
integrate with the CR systems.
The total cost of the project, including grant funds
and hospital contribution is budget at $836,663.
“This has been a banner week for
Community Choice”, indicates Tom Jones, the Executive
Director, we have had two back-to-back announcements of grant
awards in excess of $400,000.”
“The second award is the HCAP (Healthy Communities
Access Program) continuing, competitive grant which represents
the third year of funding.”
“This is a great day for regional patients!”
“Now, with the implementation of this teleradiology program,
they will receive better, more accurate, lower-cost,
high-technology care at our smaller regional hospitals,
virtually duplicating the treatment results of larger,
regional centers!”
Item #3
Advancing the "Gold Standard" of patient care...
Community Choice received this interesting story from ChartCorrect,
last week. We thought you might like to read it!
Dr. Vic Sharpe (Internal Medicine specialist, Cornerstone Medical,
in Yakima, and user of ChartCorrect electronic medical records)
just told David Atwater, programmer at ChartCorrect, a great
story last night that really excited Vic. A patient
came in for his annual physical and his PSA showed a large numerical
increase from last years' study. Vic wanted to quickly
test for infection before referring the patient to the
Urologist. Vic knew a wet mount could usually be completed
in about 10 minutes next door at the (out-sourced reference)
lab, so he sent the sample and had the patient wait.
Vic went on to his next patient and less than 15 minutes
later came back into the first patients' exam room, clicked
on his chart (on the Web Tablet) and there was the lab result
already in the chart ready to be reviewed!!! Vic was able
to click on the lab results (the wet mount, the current PSA and
last year's PSA) and include those test results in a progress
note, then electronically send the referral report with
the completed progress note to the Urologist within seconds,
right in front of the patient.
|
