Program objective

The Rural Health Care Program, one of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund programs, provides funding to eligible health care providers for telecommunications and broadband services necessary for the provision of health care. The goal of the program is to improve the quality of health care available to patients in rural communities by ensuring that eligible health care providers have access to telecommunications and broadband services. The Rural Health Care Program is currently made up of two programs: the Telecommunications Program and the Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) Program. The Telecommunications Program, established in 1997, subsidizes the difference between urban and rural rates for telecommunications services. Under the Telecommunications Program, eligible rural health care providers can obtain rates on telecommunications services in rural areas that are reasonably comparable to rates charged for similar services in corresponding urban areas. The HCF Program, established in 2012, promotes the use of broadband services and facilitates the formation of health care provider consortia that include both rural and urban health care providers by providing a flat 65% discount on an array of advanced telecommunications and information services. These services include internet access, dark fiber, business data, traditional digital service line (DSL), and private carriage services. Universal service has been defined by Congress as “an evolving level of telecommunications services . . . taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.”