Broadband essential to home medical care, urgent need for baby boomers | Opinion

Peter Rosenberger
Guest columnist
Peter Rosenberger

Like Indiana Jones carefully brushing off dirt from an archaeological find, today’s (and tomorrow’s) caregiving voters can discover an issue with enormous implications for their lives: Broadband.

In Tennessee’s rural areas, the broadband service available close to cities remains elusive for many. According to the Tennessean, in Hickman County, less than an hour from Nashville, dial-up internet service is still a thing. For many, dial-up internet is the equivalent of baby boomers using a rotary phone. For some it feels as ancient as Andy Griffith asking Sarah to connect him to Floyd’s Barber Shop.

Yet, this is the current plight across the state, as well as the country, in many rural areas.

Both Phil Bredesen and Marsha Blackburn push for rural broadband service in their quest for Bob Corker’s Senate seat, while voters yawn with boredom. Lazily swimming in vast urban and suburban rivers of data streaming, all too many don’t see the big deal about broadband. Some nod in agreement that it will help children in schools, and that’s always a good thing. Yet the issue of broadband possesses benefits many fail to consider.

With massive numbers of baby boomers stepping into senior status (10,000 per day), caregiving responsibilities continue to overwhelm families. More than 90 percent of individuals surveyed state they want to age in their own home. With family members scattered across cities, states and the country, this presents an uncomfortable challenge.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in four older people fall each year. Three million seniors are annually treated in the emergency room for falls, and more than 95 percent of hip fractures are caused by falling.

If parents or aging loved ones live in a rural area, who checks on them? What if they had broadband access that allowed family members to check in with them by video or motion-sensor monitoring with a phone multiple times per day? What if texts appeared when an aging mother failed to take her pills that morning?

Telemedicine technology improves patients' experience and ability to recuperate by limiting their need to travel for follow up appointments.

An entire industry of home monitoring for safety continues to explode across the country. From the embryonic “I’ve Fallen and Can’t Get Up” devices that aired incessantly on reruns of "Matlock," the technology has expanded to astonishing products and services.

Telemedicine continues to increase as more and more people realize that taking off time from work, fighting traffic or long commutes and waiting long hours in doctors' offices can’t compete with video conferencing with a physician on a smartphone or tablet. Most in cities know this, but what about their parents in country?

Taking off time for your own health is one thing, but to take off time to drive from Nashville to Perry County to help get your folks to a doctor’s appointment pretty much takes a whole day.

Home safety, pill reminders, monitoring and telemedicine are only a few of the innovative ways caregivers can clone themselves and juggle their exhausting responsibilities. Yet all those things require broadband.

5. broadband • Monthly google searches  4.8 million • Introduced:  September 2012 Oxford dictionary definition: A high-capacity transmission technique using a wide range of frequencies, which enables a large number of messages to be communicated simultaneously. ALSO READ: 20 Worst Paying Jobs for Women

Caregivers often function as high-functioning multi-taskers. The demands on family caregivers can be better managed with help. Alexa, Siri, Google and a host of other virtual help is a click away, but they need an interstate of broadband to travel upon, not the dirt roads that serve all too many.

From schools to medicine, from more efficient local governments to utilities, Tennessee and the rest of the country stand poised to move the country in a way that will open opportunities and service in ways we can’t imagine. Like the Interstate systems developed in the 1950s that we now take for granted, it’s a big project. 

America’s no stranger to big projects, but it requires thoughtful citizens who elect thoughtful candidates. It’s easy to divide into camps of political ideology. When it comes to the issue of caregiving, however, we find that we all have a stake in the cause. If we love someone, we’ll eventually be a caregiver. If we live long enough, we’ll need one.

When that time comes, the speed at which help arrives can very well depend upon access to broadband.

Peter Rosenberger hosts a radio program for family caregivers broadcast weekly from Nashville on more than 200 stations. He has served as a caregiver for his wife, Gracie, who has lived with severe disabilities for more than 30 years