The FCC has adopted a Report and Order to improve the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program, which helps rural health care providers afford the broadband connectivity necessary to provide telehealth and telemedicine services. The adopted rules: (1) increase RHC program participation by allowing health care providers that expect to become eligible in the near future to request funding sooner; (2) align the Service Provider Identification Number change deadline with the invoice deadline; (3) simplify rules for calculating urban rates; and (4) allow health care providers to request updates to time periods covered by a competitive bidding exemption to reflect the actual start and end dates of multi-year contracts.
Additionally, the FCC has made programmatic administrative improvements to harmonize RHC Program eligibility determination and free up unclaimed funding from funding year 2019 and prior years.
