FCC emphasized to expand $400 Million cap for Rural Health Care Program

The Universal Service Fund of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is playing a key role in advancing access to high-quality care in rural America through telehealth programs and technologies. Although, funding for the FCC’s Rural Health Care Program isn’t sufficient to meet growing requirements for telemedicine services.

That is the contention of Karen Rheuban, MD, director of the Center for Telehealth at the University of Virginia (UVA), which is also home to the Health Resources and Services Administration-funded Mid Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center, through which technical assistance is provided to providers and systems across eight states and the District of Columbia.

The FCC’s Rural Health Care Program gives funding to eligible providers for telecommunications and broadband services. The aim of the program is to make better the quality of care available to patients in rural communities. Funding for the Rural Health Care Program is capped at $400 million yearly.

“Telemedicine effectively reduces the significant challenges of workforce shortages and geographic disparities in access to care, supported by secure broadband communications services—a critical underpinning of any telehealth program,” claimed Rheuban, during Tuesday’s Senate subcommittee hearing on the FCC’s Universal Service Fund and the deployment of broadband in rural America.

In accordance with Rheuban, a pediatric cardiologist, the UVA telehealth program was developed more than 20 years ago and has saved Virginians “millions of miles” of travel and improved patient outcomes.

“We depend on the FCC Rural Health Care Program for connectivity between facilities. Absent the program, our capability to offer these services would be severely constrained,” she told lawmakers.

However, Rheuban pointed out that “utilization has highly increased, and recently the $400 million funding cap, developed by the Commission in 1998, was exceeded.” In addition, she said the FCC has “recently mitigated support by 7.5%, and this has created hardships for many states.”

As an outcome, Rheuban called on the FCC to expand the $400 million funding cap that it created almost two decades ago. “If this is not feasible, we urge Congress and the FCC to explore additional federal options to support costly infrastructure build-outs for rural healthcare providers,” she added.

Moreover, Rheuban suggested expanding eligible healthcare providers under the Rural Health Care Program to include emergency medical service personnel and community paramedics, consistent with the public health and public safety provisions.

“We also recommend involving wireless technologies as eligible under the Rural Health Care Program, particularly as we strive to improve chronic disease management with remote monitoring tools,” she said.

“The Rural Health Care Program is foundational to a modernized healthcare delivery system and as such—along with other efforts—must be sustained, expanded and further modernized to fulfill the promise of healthcare in the twenty-first Century,” Rheuban summarized.