FCC Decision Aids Telehealth

April 10, 2008

The Federal Communications Commission has extended for three years the eligibility of certain rural health care provider organizations to receive subsidized funding of their telehealth/telemedicine initiatives under the federal telecommunications universal service program.

The FCC in March 2005 changed its definition of “rural” health care facilities and temporarily grandfathered some organizations that technically no longer qualified for the subsidies. Acting under a request from the American Telemedicine Association, the FCC has extended that grandfather period to 2011, according to a final rule published April 10 in the Federal Register.

“In its petition, ATA identifies multiple health care facilities that participate in telehealth communications networks in Nebraska and Montana that would be adversely affected by the loss in universal service rural health care funding if the new definition of rural were applied to their rural health care funding applications,” the FCC noted in the rule. “This, in turn, would serve only to endanger the continued availability of telemedicine and telehealth services that these health care facilities provide.”

Consequently, the FCC believes more time is needed to evaluate the effect of the new definition before any providers lose eligibility. Further, the FCC is in the midst of a major, heavily funded telehealth pilot program with 69 rural health organizations. The program is designed to help facilitate creation of a nationwide broadband telehealth network linking rural and urban providers (see healthdatamanagement.com.

Full text of the final rule is available at gpoaccess.gov.

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