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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 #2

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 ChartConnect, last week.  We thought you might like to read it!

Dr. Vic Sharpe (Internal Medicine specialist, Cornerstone Medical, in Yakima, and user of ChartConnect electronic medical records) just told David Atwater, programmer at ChartConnect, 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.