The Federal Communications Commission Thursday proposed new rules for allocating $400 million to improve Internet connectivity in rural health providers.
If the rules are approved, more rural doctors, nurses and public and non-profit hospitals and clinics would be eligible to receive shares of the funds, so that advanced healthcare could be provided to patients no matter where they live, the FCC said in a statement.
The money, to be allocated under the Universal Service Rural Health Care Broadband Reform program, is in addition to $795 million in stimulus funds, some of which will help hospitals in four areas expand broadband infrastructure.
Under current rules, restrictions on how the money can be spent are strict. Although the funds have been available every year for more than a decade, many providers have not applied for them or been eligible.
"Too many clinics and hospitals lack affordable access to even basic broadband connectivity to handle the most basic of telehealth tasks, like managing medical records, transmitting an X-ray or MRI, or consulting remotely with a doctor," the FCC statement says. "In fact, nearly 30% of federally funded rural health care clinics can't afford secure and reliable broadband services.
"Shockingly, only 8% of Indian Health Service providers even have access to the broadband they would need to deliver advanced health care to their patients."
The rulemaking proposal seeks to make changes in these three ways:
- Establish a new, more useful program that increases funding to 50% of the monthly recurring costs, up from 25%, for all types of broadband services, including dedicated point-to-point services. The existing program only supports mass-market connections.
- Invest 85% of the construction costs for new or upgraded broadband networks for healthcare providers in areas of the country that lack broadband infrastructure adequate for health IT needs, with participants investing 15%.
- Expand the number and types of eligible health providers to include skilled nursing facilities, renal dialysis centers and off-site administrative offices and data centers that support care providers.
It would improve affordable broadband connectivity to more than 2,000 rural hospitals and clinics and deliver connections where they are needed most.
"This would expand eligibility from roughly 9,800 entities today to roughly 12,000 rural healthcare providers," according to an FCC statement.
The care connectivity grant program will give patients in rural areas access to state of the art diagnostic tools typically available only in the largest and more sophisticated medical centers, according to the agency's statement.
By doing so, the FCC says it hopes to cut medical costs "dramatically" by shortening average lengths of hospital stays and reducing the need for unnecessary or duplicative tests and increase administrative efficiencies.
How the money is eventually allocated will be a decision made on the basis of lessons learned from 62 pilot projects in rural areas in 40 states plus Puerto Rico, which received grants between $24.7 million (to the New England Telehealth Consortium) to $93,240 to the Mountain States Health Alliance in Tennessee and Virginia.
These grants were designed to benefit telehealth networks, upgrade operating speeds and fiber optic lines, strengthen disaster response, create electronic medical record capabilities, and improve training and education opportunities.
For example, a $387,187 grant in Kentucky helped build a T1 network to connect 20 facilities specializing in mental health services with video consultation and other videoconferencing applications.
A California grant of $22.1 million facilitates improved counseling and patient-physician interaction for rural residents with depression, hypertension, asthma and cardiovascular disease.
And in Utah, a $9 million allocation is upgrading networks serving 133 rural hospitals community health centers on the Navajo reservation and other facilities.
According to an FCC news release, the new care connectivity program "has the potential to do for rural healthcare providers and patients what the enormously successful E-Rate program has done for schools and students."