FCC Draft on Telehealth in Rural America Promises Reforms
A draft FCC order would reform the Rural Health Care USF program, posted in docket 17-310 and in Friday's Daily Digest. The agency said the RHC updates set for an Aug. 1 meeting vote would reform payment distribution, create a…
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database of payment rates based on geography, direct payment to the areas with the most shortages of healthcare providers if demand exceeds a funding cap, and offer more transparency to applicants. The agency said its steps would "clarify the scope of similar services for rate determination, define the geographic contours of urban and comparable rural areas for rate determination, reassign to the administrator the task of determining urban and rural rates for similar services from health care and service providers, reform the determination of rates based on the median of all available rates for functionally similar services, direct the administrator to create a publicly available database for the posting of urban and rural rates, eliminate the limitation on support for satellite services, and eliminate distance-based support."