The Broadband Ecosystem

OHN is more than merely a network that just benefits the health care community. Due to the broadband infrastructure that supports our network, it’s important to recognize and value the profound, expanding and interdependent role that quality connectivity plays not only for improved health care delivery, but for workforce and economic development as well.

Quality internet (broadband) connectivity and health information technology (HIT) are no longer “nice to haves” or purely in place for competitive advantage. Strong HIT is the number one incentive to attract, recruit and retain health care providers within communities and counter the current and future crushing health care workforce shortages across all health care related professions. This robust, next generation HIT requires a higher standard of internet connectivity (quality, reliability, scalability) to support the current and future health care applications and services.

There is a clear ripple effect of poor quality health care personnel in a community: patients don’t have access to quality care, lose confidence in the community and subsequently the health care provider loses patients and revenue. The effect continues when a provider cannot invest further in strengthening its health IT or ultimately leaves the community to practice elsewhere.

To truly meet the next generation of patient-centered care, as well as encourage robust local economies, providers must have access to broadband worthy of supporting current and future HIT applications and services. Connectivity (broadband) is no longer a nice-to-have. It has become a core societal infrastructure, as important as water, electricity, roads and safety, which support the means and quality of how we live. OHN is charged to, and therefore honored to have been a part of, expanding broadband access to every Oregonian, regardless of where they live.

The National Landscape

Similar to the national and state highway systems, our country’s health care highway is being deployed right now at the state and regional levels. The end goal is to eventually connect each of our country’s state or regional health care networks to each other as one complete integrated national delivery system. This is thanks in large part to the FCC’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program (RHCPP), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, Office of the National Coordinator and other ARRA broadband infrastructure and health care delivery system program investments. These agencies have been funding the broadband deployment and health information technology (HIT) strategy priorities of the current White House administration.

Whether you are on the road traveling in a remote part of Oregon, or in an urban work environment on the East Coast, a backbone network infrastructure like OHN will ensure that patients and providers nationwide are accessible at all points in the continuum of care. With this state, regional and national infrastructure in place, patients and providers have access to the best and most appropriate type of health information and expertise required at the point of care. A next generation of health care information and expertise that is trusted, relevant, easy to share and accessible—one that serves the Triple Aim goals to improve population health, improve patient outcomes, and reduce costs.