The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a $363,326 grant to Kalispell Regional Medical Center for distance learning and telemedicine.

The grant, part of the USDA’s rural development program, is intended to connect more rural hospitals to a regional hub such as Kalispell Regional. Kalispell is already connected to three rural locations (Libby, Ronan and Plains) and is seeking to connect to seven others over the next three years.

Kip Smith, executive director of the Health Information Exchange of Montana, penned the grant application with the help of several Kalispell Regional doctors.

“Our proposal was to create the Western Montana Teleneurology Network,” he said. “It is essentially an equipment grant to teleconference with other medical professionals.”

The biggest use of the money will be toward establishing a clear fiber optic connection with other medical facilities.

The grant proposals were submitted in August, but with the government shutdown things were delayed until this month.

The USDA handed out more than $16 million to 49 grant recipients. Nearly 200 applied for the grant money, but Kalispell Regional was the only recipient in Montana.

Many of the grants went toward academic institutions to promote learning through telemedicine. Proposing institutions were required to match at least 15 percent of grant money.

The proposal Smith submitted was specifically for neurological use.

“If a patient shows up in the emergency room of one of these hospitals with a stroke, we can immediately connect them to a neurologist on site,” he said. “But once the equipment is in place we can expand. We needed a niche and we found one.”

Smith, who works part-time at Kalispell Regional and part-time at the health exchange organization, said the grant was right in his wheelhouse. The Health Information Exchange of Montana seeks to connect hospitals covering more than 45,000 square miles in Western Montana.

The rural location of some hospitals means that before the telemedicine grant, some patients might not have received the best care possible. The $363,000 grant will go a long way toward changing that, Smith said.

Kalispell Regional’s grant proposal had two components. First was the increase the connectivity between the hospitals. The second was to provide distance learning opportunities to other medical professionals.

“Our providers would host for those rural doctors and maybe go through a presentation or have a patient there they could all learn with,” Smith said. “We want to just provide a learning kind of environment. It’s a huge opportunity for not just Kalispell Regional, but for the entire region.”

Over the next three years, the hospital hopes to expand to other facilities and add other services beside neurological ones.

“I don’t envision anything being too difficult,” Smith said. “But it is like any new technology. Getting people comfortable with it is the most difficult thing. Once they are, it will all go very smoothly.”

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.