The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today that it will use nearly $198 million in unused funding from previous years to boost the FCC Rural Health Care budget in fiscal 2020.
Initially, the funding for the program was set at $604.76 million for the current fiscal year. With the additional funds from previous years, the total funding for 2020 will be $802.74 million, the most in the program’s history.
The program aims to increase access to broadband for health care providers, particularly in rural areas, and foster the deployment of broadband health care networks. Funding is provided directly to these healthcare facilities, but rural broadband providers have had success in partnering with these facilities to help obtain funding. Interested parties can learn more here.
The FCC reports the program has gained interest in recent years with funding requests typically outstripping the funding cap. So in 2018, the FCC adopted rules to address this increasing demand:
- Increasing the annual Program funding cap for the first time in the Program’s history
- Adding a provision to adjust the cap for inflation
- Establishing a process to carry-forward unused funds from past funding years for use in future funding years.
“In 2018, the FCC took swift action to ensure that the Rural Health Care Program better reflected the needs of and advances in connected care,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, in a prepared statement. “And now, more than ever, our foresight is fortuitous, as telehealth is proving to be critical in our fight against COVID-19.”