Getting It Right: QMG’s Telehealth

Quin­cy res­i­dent and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions expert Kei­th Dunford’s recent Tele­health, or vir­tu­al, vis­it with his physi­cian was a great expe­ri­ence for him. With close to 60 years in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions and media busi­ness, Dunford’s exper­tise sheds light on the roots of using telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions to deliv­er services.

When Kei­th Dun­ford reached out to Quin­cy Med­ical Group to praise our organization’s Tele­health option for a rou­tine vis­it with his pri­ma­ry care provider Dr. Dana Alt­man, we were par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued. Dun­ford, 82, is retired from more than 40 years of work­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly in the high-tech busi­ness, includ­ing at Har­ris Broad­cast (now known as Gate­sAir) in Quin­cy. He has a long and sto­ried back­ground in media and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and, among oth­er loca­tions, has worked in Nige­ria, Ethiopia, Sier­ra Leone, Abu Dhabi, Iran, and South Africa. He began his career right out of col­lege in the Unit­ed King­dom at the inde­pen­dent TV net­work, Grana­da (now ITV). There, he worked on a wide range of TV pro­duc­tions, includ­ing the first live TV appear­ance of The Bea­t­les in late 1962.

While work­ing in Africa, Dun­ford became very involved with how satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions could help broad­cast­ers send mes­sages across the globe; he played a part that helped CNN and oth­er news net­works get estab­lished. Through this work, he also played an inte­gral role in help­ing res­i­dents in remote African vil­lages get access to ser­vices like edu­ca­tion and health­care — made pos­si­ble by advances in telecommunications.

Back then, the exper­tise required to set up such sys­tems was daunt­ing, as was the cost to deliv­er the ser­vices through the then-exist­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion mech­a­nisms. But it’s a much dif­fer­ent sto­ry today, and Dun­ford was thrilled about the ease of using QMG’s Inter­net-based Tele­health, or vir­tu­al vis­it, option.

“It worked right off the bat. Bing, bing, and bing, and I was talk­ing to Dr. Alt­man,” he explained. ​“I used my Sam­sung 10 smart phone. Before the appoint­ment, she sent a link in a text mes­sage that said ​‘This is Dr. Altman’s office. Please join me for a con­sul­ta­tion.’ And then you click on the link, it imme­di­ate­ly takes you to the ques­tion, ​‘Is this you?,’ then you key your name in, hit the go but­ton, and right away it says, ​‘con­nect­ing.’ Then up comes Dr. Altman’s voice and image.’ Bril­liant! It’s real­ly simple.”

Dun­ford — who remote­ly pro­duces radio pro­grams for the blind and visu­al­ly impaired for a Chica­go-based radio sta­tion and keeps a very busy sched­ule — not­ed Tele­health was ben­e­fi­cial for him in oth­er ways. It saved him time (“tak­ing a show­er, get­ting ready, and dri­ving to the appoint­ment and back home would have been about a cou­ple of hours alone,” he point­ed out). He said he felt safer, too, because he could get the care he need­ed from his home.

“One the major pros of it is not going out in bad weath­er. Here in the Mid­west, in the cold weath­er espe­cial­ly, it’s a risk fac­tor. I’m pret­ty healthy and pret­ty agile, but I think of the old­er pop­u­la­tion. (As my mum used to say, ​‘Look at that poor old per­son.’ And I would say, ​‘That old per­son is younger than you are!’),” he quipped. ​“And right now, of course, in the pan­dem­ic, it’s safer for both the patient and the med­ical pro­fes­sion. It adds anoth­er lay­er of safe­ty for them and for the patient.”

Dun­ford said Dr. Alt­man has been his PCP for about 10 years, and he has always appre­ci­at­ed her care and the time she takes with him.

“She has got­ten used to me,” he laughed. ​“She’s bril­liant, absolute­ly brilliant.”

Call­ing Quin­cy Home

Dun­ford, born in the U.K., land­ed in Quin­cy in 1976 — after many years of work­ing across the globe.

“Before com­ing here, we were in Swazi­land, South Africa, and I was a con­sul­tant for a devel­op­ing tele­vi­sion net­work there, and I was run­ning a radio sta­tion. Our plan was we were going to move to Aus­tralia, and we had the papers. I had a job there at a TV station.”

But his family’s plans clear­ly changed. It all start­ed when equip­ment at the radio sta­tion he was run­ning began to expe­ri­ence some tech­ni­cal issues.

“We had some equip­ment from Har­ris Broad­cast in Quin­cy, and it wasn’t work­ing. I man­aged to get it work­ing, so they sent some­one from Quin­cy to vis­it with me,” he explained.

Short­ly after that, Dun­ford received an invi­ta­tion to come to Quin­cy to vis­it with exec­u­tives at Har­ris Broadcast.

“I flew all the way from Johan­nes­burg to Lon­don, Lon­don to Chica­go, and from Chica­go to Quin­cy. Back then, they had the Ozark Air­lines Jet that arrived in Quin­cy at around 10:30 at night. I got off the air­plane, stag­gered tired­ly into the beau­ti­ful air­port we have here, and there was a par­ty going on! There was a band play­ing, peo­ple were danc­ing, and I thought to myself ​‘Wow, this is my kind of town!’”

After a three-day vis­it in Quin­cy, then a trip back to South Africa, Dun­ford told his wife if Har­ris Broad­cast were to offer him a job, he would take it.

“At that time, we were on con­tract most of the time, so it was two years here, four years there,” he said. ​“That was no big deal. I thought, ​‘Well four years there will be okay.’ Well, that was more than 40 years ago.”

He and his fam­i­ly have main­tained a res­i­dence in Quin­cy ever since. While he has trav­eled to work on con­tract in oth­er loca­tions across the U.S., he always comes back home.

“The peo­ple are amaz­ing here. I just fell in love with the place,” Dun­ford explained. ​“Since we came here in 1976 — and even though we’ve lived in New York, Chica­go, Port­land, San Jose, San Diego, and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., dur­ing that peri­od — we’ve always come back here. I absolute­ly love it. I am so for­tu­nate to fin­ish up here. Many in Quin­cy may not appre­ci­ate what they have. It is unique.”