Edna Devries
Division Medical Director
Marshfield Clinic

Many people think of access to broadband as an economic issue, or maybe a social issue.  Speaking as someone who is in the business of saving lives, I believe broadband is a health care issue.

I spoke last week to the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association, because I believe the work we are doing at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin depends on what our state and nation are doing to ensure that all communities, including rural areas, have access to high-speed Internet.  We leverage broadband to optimize medical care.

The Marshfield Clinic serves most of northern Wisconsin through 43 regional centers, with more than 1,000 physicians and non-physician providers.  In 2007, we had 3.5 million patient encounters.

At the core of our care is our transformation to chartless campuses.  By the end of 2007, all our centers were chartless, and we now have electronic health records on more than 2 million patients.  Because we have moved patient information to an electronic form, physicians can use tablet computers to access and update patient information regardless of their location.  As patients move through the system, between offices, clinics and specialists, their up-to-date records are immediately available.  We call it “point-of-care computing.”

Doctors can pull needed information – whether patient history, medications, previous treatments or comments by other physicians – immediately, rather than rifle through pages clipped to a chart or wait for information from another office.  The electronic charts can trigger reminders for preventative screening such as mammography and immunizations.  Physicians can even access the Internet during a patient visit to find additional information as needed.  Likewise, electronic prescriptions decrease the risk of medical errors, and by sending the prescription electronically to a pharmacy it can be filled immediately.

Broadband service is critical for our Electronic Health Records initiative, but plays an even larger role in patient care.  By enabling us to send large files quickly, we can find a radiologist in Hawaii, for example, to review an X-ray when it is midnight here.  When an on call physician needs to access patient information, it doesn’t matter that he is at home.  With a patient portal, patients can even monitor their progress as they seek to lose weight or make other lifestyle changes.

In remote areas, telemedicine is a growing need that will depend entirely on broadband access.  Through telemedicine, patients can continue to recover from home while using monitoring devices.  Health care workers can assess patient progress without requiring tiresome trips to a clinic.  In the same way, residents of rural areas can use broadband to access the expertise of specialists in cities miles away.  This is particularly useful as the rising price of gasoline makes long-distance trips to medical facilities become impossible for some patients.

These are just a few of the new technologies we are employing at the Marshfield Clinic.  They would not be possible without broadband Internet access.  Broadband helps to control costs, save time, reduce errors and improve patient outcomes.

By supporting public policies that encourage the investment in broadband networks and their availability throughout the country – especially in rural areas – we can bring first-class medical care to patients regardless of their locations.  That’s how broadband access contributes to this business of saving lives.