Several leaders in rural healthcare recently took the issues they are seeing straight to Capitol Hill.
They appeared before a Senate Committee, letting lawmakers know the state of the industry. There was a focus on technology and keeping up with critical infrastructure.
“The reality is, you know, the industry is heavily reliant on technology and so we have to keep up. We really cannot defer upgrading some of our basic infrastructure in terms of computing power, whether it’s Windows Me or Windows 1 or, you know, Windows 11. Obviously, there’s a grace period there when you update and replace, but there’s so much technology, whether it’s imaging, whether it’s nuclear medicine, whether its cardiac, that we wouldn’t be able to render care if we did not have adequate infrastructure,” Jeremy P. Davis, the President and Chief Officer of the Grande Ronde Hospital, explained.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is presently reviewing grant proposals, all vying for a portion of a $42 billion dollar fund intended to expand broadband access to underserved areas.
