FCC Broadband Initiative Pushes Rural Telehealth Services

Telecom Policy Report, Nov 27, 2007

Broadband deployment is one of the Federal Communications Comission's top priorities - particularly in rural America. And nowhere is the need for broadband greater than in rural healthcare, it says, where isolated clinics can save lives by using advanced communications technology to tap the expertise of modern urban medical centers.

Telehealth and telemedicine services provide patients in rural areas with access to critically needed medical specialists in a variety of practices, including cardiology, pediatrics and radiology, in some instances without leaving their homes or communities. Intensive-care doctors and nurses can monitor critically ill patients around the clock, and video conferencing allows specialists and mental-health professionals to care for patients in different rural locations, often hundreds of miles away.

To significantly increase access to acute, primary and preventive health care in rural America, the commission has promised more than $417 million during the next three years for the construction of 69 statewide or regional broadband telehealth networks in 42 states and three U.S. territories under the Rural Health Care Pilot Program (RHCPP) (WC Docket No. 02-60). The commission's RHCPP will support the connection of more than 6,000 public and non-profit healthcare providers nationwide to broadband telehealth networks. The healthcare facilities participating in the pilot program include hospitals, clinics, universities and research centers, behavioral health sites, correctional facility clinics, and community health centers.]

"It is sad but true that rural America lags the rest of the country in access to first-rate health care. That's bad news for so prosperous a nation as ours. This pilot program creatively pushes the envelope in an effort to spur the development of telemedicine programs to better serve rural America," said Commissioner Michael Copps. "Having seen first-hand the difference telemedicine and telehealth can have on the well-being of our citizens who live hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital and are injured or just need to cure a child's ear infection, telemedicine can be life-altering and sometimes even life-saving. We also know that if a health catastrophe visited many of our rural areas today, our rural healthcare system would not generally be equipped to deal with it. Anyone who believes that terrorists, for example, are only going to focus on urban America is engaged in wrong and potentially fatal reasoning."

Added FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, "A dedicated national broadband healthcare network will also facilitate the President's goal of implementing electronic medical records nationwide. Electronic medical records will improve the healthcare treatment Americans receive by, among other things, ensuring that appropriate medical information is available, reducing medical errors, reducing healthcare costs and improving the coordination among health care facilities."

He continued, "In order to receive the benefits of telemedicine, electronic healthcare records and other healthcare benefits, health providers must have access to underlying broadband infrastructure. Without this underlying infrastructure, efforts to implement these advances in healthcare cannot succeed."

According to commission paperwork, "The networks will deliver services efficiently, reduce costs and travel time for consumers, decrease medical errors, and enable health care providers to share critical information. Rapid and coordinated responses to public health emergencies, such as bioterrorism attacks, pandemics or disease-related outbreaks, will be expedited through coordination with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other public-health officials during public-health emergencies."

In addition, participants are required to implement, where feasible, health information technology standards as set forth by HHS. This will help advance the Administration's goal of creating a national system to support patients' electronic health records, the agency adds.

Participants are eligible for universal-service funding to support as much as 85 percent of the costs associated with the design, engineering and construction of their broadband healthcare networks. In order to help ensure quality and efficiency, all projects must be competitively bid and are subject to quarterly reviews along with stringent oversight and audits.

The pilot program's requirements complement HHS' nationwide IT initiatives that support the creation of a nationwide interoperable health information technology infrastructure to improve the quality of health care. These networks may connect to the public Internet or to one of the nation's dedicated Internet backbones: Internet2 or National LambdaRail.

What The Recipient States Are Saying

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), vice chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, praised the new pilot program, saying, "Access to affordable and dependable health care is vital to the residents of rural Alaska, and this pilot program is a great start. Broadband health networks in Alaska and other parts of rural America will mean that millions of Americans will be able to access the best health care in the world, no matter where they live." Pursuant to the FCC order, the Alaska Native Health Consortium will receive as much as $10.4 million in funding assistance to improve telemedicine in the state's rural area.