Many healthcare providers in the U.S.lack sufficient broadband Internet connections to meet health IT meaningful use criteria, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which is proposing new funding and regulations to help close the gap.
As many as 3,600 small practices lack even basic broadband services, an FCC survey discovered. Many thousands of other locations face price disparities of as much as $45,000 a year for the same services, and that is often much larger in rural areas.
And the safety net providers that service the most underserved of citizens have even greater hurdles to overcome. The FCC survey found that one-in-three of Indian Health Services sites have no access to commercial broadband.
Of those that do, over 90 percent rely on connections that limit the use of such things as video consultations and electronic health records.
To counter this, the FCC is proposing an array of recommendations as a part of its upcoming National Broadband Plan that it will deliver to Congress, by March 17.
They were announced during a panel held today at the Health Information and Management Systems Society annual conference.
The FCC is proposing to change its Rural Health Care Program (RHCP), which has $400 million available each year to stimulate health care communications, but which has historically been underused because of limitations in how it's authorized to spend the money.
It began providing funds in 1999, but in the first three years only 2.4 percent of the monies available were used. That's improved over time, but the FCC still only disburses around $70 million a year.
Under the new proposals, the FCC will use the RHCP money to create a health care broadband access fund, to help healthcare providers and private institutions as well as non-profits and public organizations purchase broadband services.
It will also set up a health care broadband infrastructure fund that will help providers build out new broadband networks wherever the existing infrastructure is lacking, and also enable them to link up with so-called community anchor institutions and to bring in private network partners.
Importantly, the FCC will also go beyond this kind of external funding and recommend changes to the way providers are reimbursed for handling "e-care" delivered over broadband links. That's been one of the biggest barriers to health IT adoption that providers themselves have identified.
In all cases, the FCC said it will link funding as closely as possible to meaningful use and other metrics to ensure that its support goes to those locations whose use of health IT follows the guidance of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
