The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced the approval of funding under its Rural Health Care Pilot Program (RHCPP) for the build-out of five broadband telehealth networks that will link hundreds of hospitals regionally in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In addition, funding has been approved for the design of a telehealth project in Alaska. Collectively, these six projects are eligible to receive $46 million in reimbursement for the engineering and construction of their regional telehealth networks.
The FCC established the $417 million RHCPP to increase patient access to care via telemedicine and to support the transfer of electronic medical records to improve the quality of patient care. Nationwide, 67 projects are eligible to receive RHCPP funding for telehealth networks serving 6,000 health care facilities in 42 states and three U.S. territories. At this time, 29 of these projects have developed or posted requests for proposals to select vendors to build out their broadband networks, while the remaining projects are preparing their requests for proposals as part of the competitive bidding process.
Read the press release.
