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Plans for a high-speed telecommunications network that would connect the majority of Iowa’s hospitals advanced last week, when the Iowa Hospital Association (IHA) issued two requests for proposals (RFP) to build the system.

The network is intended to make health care more efficient and cost-effective for rural Iowans by reducing travel time and costs, providing more opportunities for medical consultations from specialists and increasing the speed of electronic records transfers.

One RFP seeks bidders for construction of the “last-mile” connections of fiber-optic lines between 86 hospitals and the state-operated Iowa Communications Network, which will provide the system’s backbone. Six other hospitals, including Mercy Medical Center – Des Moines, already have last-mile connections and will be part of the network. The second RFP calls for furnishing and installing network switches and optical equipment at each of the participating hospitals.

Both projects are coordinated by the IHA through the Iowa Rural Health Telecommunications Program, which in November 2007 received a $9.9 million rural health-care grant from the Federal Communications Commission to build the Iowa portion of a national network.

At the same time, Iowa Health System plans to build a separate, privately owned system, using $7.8 million from the same pool of FCC rural health-care funds. Iowa Health, which operates Iowa Lutheran Hospital, Iowa Methodist Medical Center and Blank Children’s Hospital as well as hospitals in six other Iowa cities, will connect 29 hospitals initially. Iowa Health plans to pay the 15 percent of the cost of the project not covered by the grant for the initial 29 hospitals.The hospital group is currently waiting to receive approval to proceed with soliciting bids for the project, a spokeswoman said.