Why is Bandwidth so Important for EMR at Your Practice?

I recently spoke with the administrator of an ophthalmology practice about the issues of inter-office electronic communications. She administrates a practice with one single location; however, the practice is considering installing a large-area-network (LAN) using the Internet.

Still, the doctors at the practice have some issues with allowing their employees to access the Web at work. This is an important matter in itself. However, what the practice really needs to ask is, what do we want our network to look like in the future, and how much bandwidth will we need for it to work smoothly?

The term ‘bandwidth’ has a series of definitions which all depend on the context in which it is being used. Is it radio communications, data transfer, optical physicals, or digital communications systems? Let’s discuss the latter.

Whether your practice uses a single LAN or has several office locations, there is a limited amount of data able to be transferred between any two computers. This transfer of data can be thought of as being like water flowing through a series of pipes. Generally, you can transfer more water (info) if you’re using more, larger pipes. Increasing the flow rate is a possibility (as in data packets), but this depends on the types of files and computers that will be participating in the transfer.

If the medical practice has several locations or is anticipating having more than one location, it is essential that you understand what connections are available for them to communicate between, be it a normal telephone line, DSL, dedicated phone connection, or fiber-optic high-speed connection. These concerns are especially important if your practice intends to use a system that needs digital images to be viewable over the network.

Bear in mind that in addition to the obvious, there are some basic things that will require available bandwidth at your practice: electronic billing, e-mail, patient scheduling, and data backup and storage.

Let’s consider a new staff person who works at the front desk, who happens to spend their slow times downloading large music files and games from the Internet, without the supervisor’s knowledge.

The first clue you may receive about this situation is a call from the Office Manager – a complaint that electronic reconciliation isn’t going through, and there seems to be some sort of connection problem. This example also brings up the issue of creating definite Internet use policies for staff; you can search Google for some good examples of this. Connection security is another important issue that will be addressed in a future article.

Some software programs currently available can regulate the amount of bandwidth that they make available for particular functions, applications, and even users. Those software applications that are critically important to the practice’s operation, such as business transactions or EMR, can have established reserved allotments of bandwidth. In this way, if a staff person leaves their computer connected to an Internet radio program, for example, the profitable functions of the practice will not be affected adversely.

By the way, do you want to learn more about implementing EMR in your own practice? Download my free report "Getting Through The EMR Maze."

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