How New Computers Helped American Samoa Clinics See More Patients and Provide Better Care
Success StoriesOutdated computers were slowing down care in American Samoa’s public health clinics. With systems nearly a decade old, doctors often struggled to connect to electronic health records, communicate with colleagues, or complete patient intakes efficiently — delaying care for the communities they serve.
In this video, Alvina Savali, Workforce Development CEO with the American Samoa Department of Health, explains how Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) funding made it possible to replace aging computers and printers across clinics on Tutuila and the Manuʻa Islands over the course of just two weeks. These upgrades restored reliable connectivity, reduced manual paperwork, and allowed clinicians to spend less time waiting on outdated technology – and more time caring for patients.
The result? Clinic doctors can see more patients, reduce prescription turnaround time, and improve coordination for medical evacuations from outer islands to the mainland.
Video Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
What upgrades did your public health clinics need?
So American Samoa clinics – our Department of Health clinics – their computers, printers, and such were old. I mean, that’s the best word I can say. Maybe nine, ten years or older. And we all know that in the modern world, computers expire within a three- to five-year lifespan. And because of that issue, in the PHIG workplans and budget narratives, we had applied for computers to sustain our clinics. And that was, I think, a total of 35 computers. And we worked it out to maybe four or five computers and printers per clinic. But then we had to also include our Manu’a Islands clinics, which are Ofu and Taʻū.
How did you use PHIG to make these upgrades?
Strategy A3 – data modernization – the plans are to upgrade the systems and upgrade the equipment. In order for us to get that equipment out there, there’s a lot of staging and planning that we need to process. We needed to know: Who would be taking the equipment? How is the equipment going to get there? And then we need to figure out the per diem and stay accommodations or hotel accommodations for the traveler.
So the procurement process normally takes three months, maybe. But this time, we were able to complete the mission within a two-week timeframe.
Why were these upgrades so important?
Obviously, the doctors – they’re our workforce too, and they need connectivity to be able to communicate with us on the mainland, which is Tutuila. And the issue was that a lot of times these old computers wouldn’t get connectivity. So, they couldn’t connect to Zoom, they couldn’t connect to EHR, locally or even abroad. There was no connection, because these computers are so old.
In our case, it’s obviously helpful to the community for the doctors to be able to see and do the intakes. It starts with triage, then moves to whatever the doctor’s going to diagnose the patient with. And without having that connectivity to the Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, or even looking up cases to see how they can help the patient, without that connectivity, they’re pretty much just sitting there waiting.
What happens is, it’s manual input for the intake documents, and then when they get online, they’re able to upload that information or whatever it is that they need to research. Then they’re able to get online, upload the information I’m talking about, which is the intake forms, into the EHR.
What improvements have you seen?
All the upgraded systems help not only us on Tutuila, which are the main islands, but the doctors are able to see more patients and reduce turnaround time with getting their prescriptions. Whether or not they need to be medevaced, because there’s another program that we were able to use to purchase a medical vessel. So, in the event we need to evacuate patients from Manu’a and bring them to the mainland where the hospital is, that is something that we tie in together. But for this specific topic, we’re able to connect our doctors with our patients by having the continuity of WiFi service and upgraded equipment.
Why is funding like this so important?
These dollars, these PHIG dollars, have been granted to us to help upgrade the public health services for the people of American Samoa. And I just ask that you please continue to help support the mission. Thank you.