Grady Health System Delivers Digital Healthcare with Comcast

ATLANTA - Grady Health System, one of the largest public health systems in the U.S., has selected Comcast Business Ethernet to deliver technology-based healthcare initiatives that improve patient care and boost efficiency for medical and administrative staff across all of its facilities. Comcast Business is a unit of Comcast Cable, a provider of video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to business and residential customers.

The Grady Health System includes Grady Memorial Hospital – the largest hospital in Georgia – licensed for 953 beds. The hospital is the premier level 1 trauma center in the Metro Atlanta area. In addition, the health system operates six neighborhood health centers, an outpatient pharmacy, Crestview Health & Rehabilitation Center, and Grady EMS, the 911 ambulance service for the city of Atlanta, responding to more than 100,000 calls each year.

Network Capacity to Support EMR, PACS and Telemedicine
High-performance Ethernet from Comcast Business is providing network capacity for Grady’s remote offices to use Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) and telemedicine programs for its patients. These programs enable real-time transfer of digital medical records and high-resolution radiology files, improving the speed of diagnosis and information sharing to enhance patient care. Comcast Ethernet Network Service provides 300 Mbps of performance to Grady’s data centers and 50 Mbps connections to 15 other remote sites to enhance connectivity between facilities. Grady also has an Ethernet Dedicated Internet line that provides a 100 Mbps connection to the Internet over the national Comcast network.

“Comcast Business Ethernet gives us five times the bandwidth at less than the cost of our previous provider, and they helped us to simplify our network infrastructure while streamlining the support services associated with change control, and the other administrative functions, which is important in an organization this large,” said Kevin Yearick, director of network services at Grady Health System. “The implementation process was simple because Comcast provides fiber connections right to all of our buildings, so we can connect 17 different sites and utilize the benefits of EMR and PACS throughout all of our facilities.”