Mission
Our mission is to provide ARTN members - small, rural, and remote hospitals and clinics across Alaska - with access to specialty physicians through the use of modern telecommunications capabilities and medical equipment. ARTN sites have found that the Network eases future expansion into varied telehealth services, including: Tele-stroke, E-ICU (distance ER and ICU consultation relying on local, live video conferencing capability) and real-time, distance laboratory services. Thus, community residents served by ARTN member facilities will benefit from the increased access to high-quality, locally-delivered healthcare services.
In addition, ARTN aims to provide significant training and continuing education opportunities for rural clinical providers and community members via video conferencing technologies and the ARTN's education-oriented IP video framework.
Network Goals
- Improve access to and the quality of health care for residents in rural Alaska
- Provide quality, efficient Internet service and VoIP communications systems
- Enable multiple vendors to provide rural hospitals and clinics with effective, distance radiology services at a reasonable cost and, in the not too distant future, other, expanded telehealth specialty services
- Improve member service delivery, quality and efficiency by sharing human and capital resources across the network, standardizing systems to ensure compatibility, aggregating demand, and improving access to multiple vendors
- Accommodate alternative business models (i.e., local reads with archive capability; a combination of local and remote reads; or reliance only on a remote read/imaging service)
Project Initiatives
The following initiatives have already been accomplished with the support of our membership and funders:
- Upgraded existing equipment to a common, computed radiography standard
- Added local, secure Picture Archive and Communications System (PACS) capability to provide short-term digital image storage that can be linked to significant, central storage capacity at the Wide Area Network (WAN) hub (or Core). This connection ensures long term, secure, redundant digital images for quick access by hospital and clinic health information management staff.
- Upgraded existing telecommunications equipment and services to enable reliable, efficient teleradiology, videoconferencing (training), voice, and data services.
- Developed a service Core that quickly and efficiently interconnects service providers, while also providing for local and network systems maintenance (either via the Internet or on-site).
- Created a mechanism for delivering quality, accredited distance education programs to clinical providers at member hospitals.
The expected outcome of this project is that all ARTN members will have access to modern teleradiology equipment, upgraded and fully compatible telecommunications systems, and multiple service providers so that patients may have access to timely, effective, quality healthcare services at a reasonable cost in some of Alaska's most remote communities.
Measurable Outcomes
Measurable objectives for this project include:
- Prompt receipt of the contract radiologist's diagnosis of a patient's x-ray or CT scan results
- Increase in the number of patients receiving radiology services at ARTN member hospitals and clinics
- Increase in patient access to specialists, including radiologists and later, telepharmacists, telepsychiatrists, etc.
- Improved patient outcomes when treatment requires radiology services
- Reduction in the number of patients traveling outside of their rural communities in order to obtain appropriate treatment services
- Reduction in staff training expense
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