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COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2015 Business Expo
COMPTELPlus
|
Monday, October 19, 2015
Beka Publishing,
www.bekapublishing.com22
DAY 1
TeleQuality Offers Computer Network Solutions to
Rural Healthcare Providers
T
eleQuality Communications Inc. (TQCI) and its
subsidiary, Rural Health Telecom, have devel-
oped a program to provide top-tier computer
network solutions to rural healthcare providers
(HCPs) across the country.
“The last couple of years have provided Tele-
Quality with new opportunities, as our quality
of service and growth in technology resources
continue to open doors,” said Tim Koxlien,
CEO of TeleQuality, a COMPTEL member. “We
have been fielding growing requests from our
rural healthcare partners to gain access to our
advanced IT managed services and technical
support capabilities, which are normally only
available to the healthcare facilities in larger
metropolitan markets.”
The health and well-being of the rural HCP’s
local IT environment is imperative for providing
quality care to patients. Healthcare providers must
proactively manage, monitor and support their IT
infrastructure, but limited resources continue to
be a hindrance. TQCI is tackling this with computer
network solutions that will help prevent disrup-
tions and maintain the day-to-day operations of
the computer network—thus allowing healthcare
personnel to focus on the patients.
“Healthcare providers are under increasing pres-
sure to maintain high-quality patient care, while
being faced with ever-decreasing budgets and
stricter regulations,” said Koxlien. “Loss of customer
data and Internet connectivity issues can have
long-lasting effects on healthcare organizations:
Compliance violations of federal data-handling
regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA), tarnished reputa-
tion culminating from an inability to treat patients,
revenue loss and data recovery costs.”
The stakes are extremely high for rural HCPs
that are already financially struggling to keep their
doors open. According to the National Rural Health
Association (NRHA), 58 rural hospitals out of 2,322
have shut their doors since 2010.
Diane Calmus, government affairs and policy
manager at NRHA, said there’s not one specific
reason for the closings, but rather, a culmination
of events. “The rural population tends to be older,
sicker and poorer than their urban counterparts
and are much more reliant on Medicaid and Medi-
care. So cuts to those programs, along with regula-
tory burdens on rural hospitals are hitting these
hospitals hard,” she told Healthcare Dive.
With somany rural hospitals on the brink of
closing, they simply cannot afford any network disrup-
tions that would lead to an added financial burden.
“TQCI understands how critical it is for rural
healthcare providers to maintain local computer
network connectivity to prevent patient care inter-
ruptions,” said Koxlien. “We will perform a complete
assessment of the entire network and develop a
comprehensive report that identifies areas that
need to be addressed, such as disc-space avail-
ability, hardware replacement needs, device status
and security monitoring, to name a few services.”
While telecom companies can provide the fiber
and other modalities that can fulfill the broadband
requirements necessary to transfer large amounts
of data and high-resolution images, healthcare
providers must still engage in IT environment moni-
toring and management to prevent IT network
failures, whether it be outsourced or conducted
internally. In addition, HCPs must be able to rely on a
data center partner that can protect patient data as
required by government regulations, and guarantee
the uptime and availability needed to access patient
files when needed.
There’s also an economic issue to consider:
According to the findings of a recent Ponemon
Institute/Emerson Network Power report, health-
care organizations face average costs of $690,000
per outage incident.
The most significant cost organizations incurred
after data center outages were business disrup-
tion costs, pegged at an average of $238,717; lost
revenue costs, averaging $183,724; and end-user
productivity, an average of $140,543 lost per inci-
dent, according to the report.
“This increase in cost underscores the impor-
tance for organizations to make it a priority to
minimize the risk of downtime that can poten-
tially cost thousands of dollars per minute,” said
Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the
Ponemon Institute.
The report included responses from 450 data
center professionals on the root causes and
frequency of data center downtimes. Respon-
dents experienced an average of two complete
data center outages over the past two years,
while partial outages occurred six times in the
same timeframe.
“Whether you are a telecom company or a data
center provider, healthcare providers are counting on
you to provide real-time coordination and information
exchange to ensure reliable, secure and compliant
infrastructure for mission-critical applications and
sensitive patient data,” TeleQuallity said.
o
Telispire Now Offers 4G LTE Service
on Three Major Wireless Networks
T
elispire (Booth 714), a mobile virtual
network enabler (MVNE), has announced
that 4G LTE service is now available from
three of its major network partners.
The news means that Telispire is one of the
first MVNEs to offer 4G LTE service nationwide
on both CDMA and GSM networks.
“We are very excited to offer 4G LTE options
to our mobile virtual network operator (MVNO)
partners on three major US wireless carriers,”
said Nicholas Aldi, COO and CFO at Telispire.
“Offering 4G LTE carrier service allows our
resellers to provide their subscribers with state-
of-the-art devices as well as 4G data speeds.
This enables our resellers to bundle this service
with their current telecom and video services.”
Telispire’s MVNO services support both
prepaid and postpaid services on both the
CDMA and GSM networks. It offers a turn-
key solution for operators wanting to enter
the wireless marketplace with a low capital
expenditure, a customized offering and a
flexible back office system. Telispire also
offers Tier 1 customer care and a turn-key
e-commerce platform, including device
fulfillment services.
“Telispire is all about helping companies
grow their revenue and profits by expanding
their reach and exposure, and we are very
excited that having 4G LTE on three major Tier
1 carriers will be very impactful,” added Curtis
Knobloch, CEO at Telispire.
o
‘The health and well-being
of the rural HCP’s local
IT environment is
imperative for providing
quality care to patients.’