Date: Thursday, May 2, 2013

Time: 2:30PM-3:30PM

Room: Washington Room 3

Description: The FCC’s new Healthcare Connect Fund offers important new opportunities for health care providers to obtain better broadband service at lower cost.  This new funding mechanism also provides significant benefits only to those health care providers that apply together as a consortium.  But what exactly is a consortium and how do you form one?  Hear from three successful FCC Rural Health Care pilot program networks about how they formed their consortia, the challenges they faced, and the benefits their members are now realizing.

Moderator: Jeffrey Mitchell, Counsel, Lukas Nace Gutierrez & Sachs, LLP

Panelists:

• Jim Rogers, ProInfoNet, New England Telehealth Consortium

• W. Roger Poston,II, Ed.D., COO, Medical University of South Carolina

Speaker Bios:

Jim Rogers is the founder of ProInfoNet, an independent technology consulting firm based in Bangor Maine.  Jim and ProInfoNet played a foundational role in the development and design of the New England Telehealth Consortium.  Prior to founding ProInfoNet, Jim spent 15 years in the private business sector, managing information technology and telecommunications in Maine.  He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Maine and has served as adjunct faculty at Husson University, teaching courses in Telecommunications and Information Technology.  Jim was also instrumental in the formation of the Northern Maine Telecommunications Users Group. Jim helped lead the Maine Telecommunications Forum in recommending industry standards to guide the future of Maine Telecommunications to the Governor and state policy makers; and he served on the Nynex customer panel for the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

Dr. Roger Poston received degrees from Mercer University, the Medical College of Georgia and West Virginia University.  He served as a tenured Associate Professor and Assistant Vice President for Information Technology at the University of Louisville and tenured Associate Professor and Director of Biomedical Communications at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.  Currently, he has a faculty appointment in the Department of Health Administration and Policy, College of Health Professions, and the Chief Operating Officer and Director for Academic and Research systems in the Office of the CIO at the Medical University of South Carolina. He served as the Telemedicine Focus Group Chair for the North Carolina Health Care Information and Computing Alliance for seven years and as the Director of Telehealth services at the North Carolina Baptist Hospitals, Inc.  He currently serves as the Executive Director for the South Carolina Light Rail and the Associate Program Director for the Palmetto State Providers Network, an RHC Pilot network. 

Presentations:

NETC SHLB presentation 5-2-13.pdf

PSPN SHLB v2.pptx