Daily Archives: December 13, 2008

Medicare Paying a little for Telemedicine

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I have too much news for a Saturday, but this article caught my eye too…

MPR had an article yesterday about telemedicine in Wadena (well patient in Wadena, doctor in Twin Citifies). Telemedicine is a big boon to patients who no longer have to make the drive 6 hours to and from the Cities. So Wadena used it despite the fact that often Medicare didn’t pay for it – despite the fact that the remote visits do save money. (A study in Maine found an average savings of $580 for each nursing home patient seen with a telemedicine appointment.)

The hard thing for many hospitals and homes is installing the necessary equipment to participate in telemedicine. Telemedicine savings would quickly pay for the cost of equipment. But, most of those savings would go to Medicare or private insurers, not nursing homes.

There’s a new federal rule that will allow nursing homes to charge a $20 facility fee for each patient using telemedicine. It’s not a lot – but I guess it’s some incentive. (Maybe the latest $25 billion proposed by the TIA would help hospitals too – at least with the broadband they need to offer telemedicine!)

LeRoy is Getting Wireless

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More moves at a very local level to encourage broadband access. This week the LeRoy City Council gave permission to Axxess WiFi to attach a wireless unit to the water tower. Axxess WiFi is a wireless Internet service provider (WISP) company and an authorized agent for Wildblue and Hughesnet Satellite Communications.

(I wasn’t able to find much on Axxess – unless they are the same Axxess who provides access in South Africa.)

WiFi at Buck Hill

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OK, still not enough to get me on the slopes but Buck Hill (in Burnsville MN) is expanding their WiFi. Here’s the quick news form the Dakota County Tribune:

Buck Hill Ski Chalet, Burnsville, has expanded its WiFi network so more users will now have the ability to access the service simultaneously. Buck Hill has contracted with Frontier to provide wireless Internet access to customers, complete with a specially designed Web Splash Page.

The hot spot at Buck Hill will offer chalet guests the ability to log on to the Internet via their WiFi-enabled devices, such as a laptop, netbook, portable game console or PDA. An interested Web surfer simply has to click “connect” to begin checking e-mails and surfing the Web.

PC Mag’s Blazingest ISPs

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Thanks to Mary Ann Van Cura for sending me the article from PG Mag on the fastest ISPs. They polled tons of their readers to see who has the “blazingest speeds”.

Apparently they had 17,000 people respond to test their connection speeds and rank their satisfaction with their local provider. (In only three states were more than 50 percent of those polled were satisfied.) I think the goal of this PC Mag report was twofold: determine best areas in the US and help readers find a good provider.

Fiber was recognized as king of the hill speed-wise. Cable was consistently faster than DSL and most customers seemed pretty happy with cable. Urban areas were better off than rural areas.

So what were the results? Minnesota was number was 18 for speed with an average of 609 Kbps. (The national average was 557 Kbps.) We didn’t do as well with satisfaction. We had 34 percent of folks satisfied with their (that’s also a rank of 34th); however, we only had 15 percent of folks who were actually dissatisfied (for a rank of 46th).

You can download most of the results here. You have to sign up to be a PC Mag member; it’s free.

No broadband wreaks havoc on the day

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I look at a lot of broadband reports. I hear stories of broadband success and failure. But mostly I have decent (not great) access. So I forget what it’s like not to have decent access.

Ann Higgins sent this kind of quirky comment from a Current listener about how sad she is that the Current Morning Show has moveed online. If you’re not an MN Public Radio listener (or maybe not a morning listener), here’s the scoop. Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole have been doing the Morning Show forever. I think they picked up when Garrison Keillor quit mornings. Actually I think Jim Ed (if not both) worked with Keillor. They play a different kind of alternative music. They played the kind of alternative music that your dad likes.

Well Jim Ed retired. Thursday was their last show. So now the show has moved to Heartland Pubic Radio – available online and via HD radio. Here’s a comment from one say rural listener who can’t access the show the way she used to…

Well, I woke up to what I’ve termed “Black Friday” – December 12. I live in rural MN, where HD radio has yet to deliver Radio Heartland and most home-based internet connections are dial-up, so live-streaming music is pretty patchy. I couldn’t help thinking about how much laughter and darn good music I have enjoyed on my 30 mile commute to work. Luckily at work we have high-speed access – I’ve never been so over-joyed to arrive at work! Right away, I tuned in to Dale’s voice and his high quality musical choices. All was set right in my world again – my spirits were lifted, my mind at ease. I could greet my students with a bounce in my step! I’ll do everything I can to support Radio Heartland – thanks for still being there Dale and Mike.

This led to another email from Ann that helped me find Eldo Telecom, a blog in California that covers ‘the shameful travesty of America’s incomplete “last mile” telecommunications infrastructure that leaves millions without broadband access, stranded on the dark side of the digital divide and still connecting to the Internet the same way they did when Bill Clinton was beginning his first term as president and more than a decade after Clinton signed the 1996.” The blogger is a journalist – so it’s well written from a guy in the trenches of broadband neverland.