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$100M Connected Care Pilot

FCC Circulates 2 Telehealth Items, Including $200M COVID-19 Fund

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated telehealth items Monday. One would allocate the $200 million in emergency COVID-19 funding Congress appropriated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (see 2003270058). Another would direct $100 million in USF spending for a three-year Connected Care pilot (see 1906190013).

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Pai urged commissioners to vote promptly. Commissioner Brendan Carr, who shepherds the Connected Care pilot, said he voted to approve the order.

The agency will seek expedited OMB approval of application forms and Federal Register publication for the $200 million COVID-19 telehealth spending, and said it could take applications for healthcare providers as early as the next day. The Wireline Bureau will review streamlined applications on a rolling basis. The program would stop when funding is exhausted or the pandemic ends.

The agency expects to limit payments to $1 million per provider, officials told reporters, speaking on condition they not be identified or quoted verbatim. The program doesn't require competitive bidding because the FCC doesn't want to delay implementation. "As we self-isolate and engage in social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth will continue to become more and more important," Pai said.

The Senate Commerce Committee praised Pai in a tweet “for ensuring our health care providers have the tools they need to stay better connected during” the outbreak.

The Connected Care pilot isn't expected to be operational in time to address the height of the pandemic, officials said. Applications will be collected and reviewed as a group. The three-year USF program would pay up to 85% of broadband access to a patients' homes to support connected care with a participating healthcare provider.

Under USF restrictions, the Connected Care program can't subsidize connected devices, and it requires healthcare providers use competitive bidding. It's designed to be technology neutral and could support fixed or mobile broadband at the healthcare providers' request. The program isn't limited to rural health care providers, and is meant to serve veterans and low-income providers.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., had urged the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to expand Medicare coverage for audio-only telehealth services during the pandemic. CMS reimburses healthcare providers only for video telehealth services. “No Medicare recipients should be denied telehealth access at this perilous time simply because they lack video-conferencing capabilities,” Markey wrote Administrator Seema Verma: CMS "must do everything it can to help our nation’s most vulnerable populations.” CMS didn’t comment.

Our bulletin about Pai's announcement is here. (It and our other coronavirus coverage is in front of our pay wall.)