Source: Baton Rouge Business Report -- Daily Report
A $15.9 million grant from the Federal Communications Commission is being used to implement digital record-sharing at more than 100 nonprofit and rural hospitals around Louisiana. The transportation of complete medical records through a high-speed network has been a pet project of Louisiana’s larger hospitals since before the 2005 hurricanes, but rarely has such an undertaking been launched on the community level. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals is overseeing the project, which couples geostationary satellite communication technologies with access to the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, a fiber-optic network that connects supercomputing resources throughout the state. This will be especially important in the event of another disaster like Hurricane Katrina because doctors in one part of Louisiana can instantly transmit patient information to another part of the state. “Although we have recognized the importance of electronic health information for the past four years, Hurricane Katrina clearly demonstrated that paper records are not sufficient, and that there is tremendous value in ensuring that a patient’s record is easily accessible by anyone providing care,” says Dr. Roxane Townsend, DHH secretary. --Jeremy Alford
Publish Date:
01-02-2008
