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Hospitals Form High-Speed Telemedicine Network

University of Vermont Health Network Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital
WAMC

A collaboration of hospitals and health care systems is implementing a state-of-the-art, high-speed telemedicine network across New York State’s northern tier.

The Adirondack Champlain Telemedicine Information Network, known as ACTION, has been in the works for several years. It will link hospitals and health centers in New York and Vermont.  Plattsburgh’s CVPH Medical Center is the lead health care provider for the system, which President Stephens Mundy explained includes 8 hospitals and 40 primary care facilities across 8 counties.

CVPH Medical Center shares a cardiologist with the Massena Memorial Hospital.  Massena’s Senior Director for Public Relations and Planning Tina Cochran says the ACTION Network improves telemedicine across northern New York.

Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington is the primary trauma facility for the region.  Chief Medical Officer Dr. Adam Buckley spoke with Dan Davis, the hospital’s IT Manager about the new technology.

The region has not had the fiber optic network capabilities in the past.  With the infrastructure in place, Fort Drum Regional Health Planning Organization Regional Telemedicine Project Manager Bob Hunt says it will be easy to link this ACTION network to other fiber optic telemedicine networks in central and western New York State.

The federal Rural Health Care Pilot Program awarded a nearly 9 million dollar grant to complete the network.  It includes hospitals and health centers in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Rensselaer, Saratoga, St. Lawrence, Warren and Washington Counties and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in New York, and Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont.