Colorado Telehealth Net a major win for Qwest

Qwest Communications (NYSE:Q) has seen its newly invigorated focus on the health care industry pay off big within the last week, announcing two major contracts including a statewide network for the Colorado Hospital Association and Colorado Behavioral Health Council that links 400 urban and rural medical facilities across the state.

The Colorado Telehealth Network will be one of the largest in the US, once completed, and is designed to bring a new level of care to medical facilities serving rural and indigent populations in a cost-effective way, said Steven Summer, chief executive officer of the Colorado Hospital Association.

“We are a state that is economically not ranked low, but some of our rural communities have a preponderance of patients who are uninsured or insured by government programs, so they have a high level of indigent and uncompensated care,” Summer said in an interview. “They don’t have the capital and the resources to invest in technology like this.”

By linking these facilities to better staffed urban hospitals, and even by linking urban hospitals with different specialties, the Colorado Telehealth Network is designed to enable remote diagnostics via a fiberoptic network operating at speeds up to 100 megabits per second. It is also intended to enable remote, in-home monitoring of chronically ill patients, and more cost-effective sharing of specialized resources, Summer said.

The second Qwest contract, announced Tuesday, involves Houston-based HealthHelp, a radiology benefits management company that is using Qwest’s solutions for its call center and for disaster recovery/business continuity.

Qwest began looking again at vertical market solutions within the past 18 months and sees health care as a specific target, said Barry Witonsky, group manager of solutions marketing for Qwest.

“We view it as a good market to be in because health care is really behind every other industry in their use of technology, not to mention that it is a growing area, in terms of its markets,” Witonsky said. “Our marketing efforts are in different organizations right now. We just started going back into vertical marketing in a big way 18 months ago, and within that time, we have realized that health care is something to focus on. I link to quite a few sales people who serve those customers, and there are several hundred of them.”

Qwest is working with vendors, such as Cisco, that are also bringing ideas to the fore, and with organizations such as the CHA and CBHC. “We are working hard to pull the pieces together,” Witonsky said.