Golden Valley Health Centers Implement Comcast Business Ethernet

LIVERMORE, CA — Golden Valley Health Centers (GVHC), a non-profit health care system in California's Central Valley, is installing Comcast Business Ethernet services at its final site – totaling 20 clinical sites in Merced and Stanislaus counties. With boosted broadband speeds from Comcast Business, GVHC is able to rely on a stable and efficient connection, ensuring that physicians can update records in real time, access critical information and transmit data to an off-site disaster preparedness storage database daily. With the upgrade, the health care system will be moving from Internet speeds of 1.5 Mbps to nearly 100 Mbps.

GVHC has grown from its humble beginnings of only one full-time medical doctor and dentist in 1972 to a staff of 120 clinicians, providing aid for low-income patients, patients with no insurance and single-parent families. The health system sees thousands of patients each year, making it critical to support a high-volume of patient data received and updated daily.

Improved Patient Experience
With this technology upgrade, patients can expect an improved experience since much of an appointment is fully dependent on effective broadband speeds — from scheduling, to viewing MRIs and x-rays, to updating health records during exams. With a fast and speedy connection, providers can expedite the patient check-in process and maintain an efficient patient flow, minimizing wait times for visitors.

Comcast Business’s high-speed connection also plays a crucial role in transferring data. In order to preserve patients’ electronic health records, increased broadband is needed to transfer the hundreds of gigabytes of data collected daily from across GVHC’s 20 sites to an off-network storage facility. This process occurs nightly and must be completed before the clinics re-open in the morning. This process would not be possible without secure, reliable and fast Internet speeds.

“GVHC staff and providers situated across our Central Valley rely on high-speed connections to access and update patient information in a secure fashion in the organizations Practice Management (PM) system, as well as access Internet resources for insurance verification,” said Tony Ortiz, Network Administrator III at Golden Valley Health Centers.

Efficient Digital Health Care Solutions
“Reliable and efficient solutions are critical to healthcare providers in today’s increasingly digital environment,” said Ted Girdner, vice president of Comcast Business for Comcast’s California Region. “GVHC is providing superior health care to the Central Valley, and we’re pleased to provide a solution that enhances patient and provider experiences.”

The broadband boost is so significant that, based on current utilization averages, GVHC will only be using about 25 percent of capacity. The additional bandwidth available will ensure that GVHC is able to scale in the coming years as health information technology continues to grow and advance.