Participants Complain Health Care Connect Fund Rules Are Tough to Understand
Members of the Ad Hoc Broadband for Rural Health Group complained to the FCC about their difficulty understanding the rules for the rural health care program’s Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF). They met with aides to Commissioners Anna Gomez and Olivia Trusty and agency staff, said a filing Friday in docket 25-133.
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The group’s membership “consists of organizations and personnel that have been participating in the [rural] programs for well over a decade and represent some of the most experienced and sophisticated program participants,” the filing said. "Nevertheless, many in our group have difficulties ascertaining which services are eligible in the HCF program, especially but not exclusively network services.”
While the Universal Service Administrative Co. “provides a list of ‘examples of products and services that are typically eligible for support in the [HCF],’ this list is often not useful in understanding the basis for USAC’s eligibility decisions,” the group said. USAC’s decisions are also “sometimes inconsistent in a single funding year, or particular services which have been eligible for multiple funding years become inexplicably ineligible."