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Rural Health Care Overview
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RHC Conference Call Minutes
May 9, 2002

On April 18, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the Rural Health Care Support Mechanism.  The FCC is seeking comments from any interested parties for making new rules for the program.  Five major areas are under consideration:

1.

Eligible entities - Health care providers such as nursing homes, hospices, and long-term care facilities have previously been considered ineligible for participation in the Rural Health Care Support Mechanism.  The FCC is seeking comment as to whether such entities should be regarded as eligible.

2.

Eligible services - The FCC is considering the addition of Internet access support to the list of services eligible for support

3.

Discount calculation - two aspects of the way in which support is calculated are being considered: the maximum allowed distance, or MAD,  for insular areas and whether to expand the MAD for circuits  originating in the continental United States.   Currently, the MAD is calculated as the distance between the health care provider and the farthest point of the nearest large city of 50,000 in the applicant's state.  If an applicant's circuit distance is beyond the calculated MAD, support is truncated accordingly.  Potential modifications could include increasing the MAD to allow the circuit to connect to any point in the state, or eliminating the MAD altogether.

4.

Competitive bidding - One of the most important requirements of the Rural Health Care Support Mechanism is its requirement that all applicants post their requests for services for 28 days on the RHCD website and consider all bids.  Because of the isolated location  of many rural health care providers, only one telecommunications service provider is available to them, and thus they receive few, if any, competing bids.  The FCC is seeking comment on whether the 28-day period should be eliminated for cases where no competition is available.

5.

Most cost-effective services - How to evaluate the most cost effective service is under consideration.

These are only the main points of the NPRM; the FCC is seeking comment on these or any aspect of the Rural Health Care program.  The full text of the NPRM is available on this website.  Instructions for filing comments are found within the document.

On April 29, FCC Form 467 became available for electronic certification for Funding Years 2001 and 2002.  This is the last form in the application process, and is enclosed with the Funding Commitment Letter from RHCD.  Those who have enabled electronic certifications, can now log onto the RHCD website and find a pre-filled FCC Form 467 that they can certify, sign, and submit electronically.  When applicants use this method RHCD  receives the form immediately, without any need to send the form through the mail.  If you have questions or encounter any problems using electronic certification, call the Customer Service Support Center at 1-800-229-5476.

The beginning of Funding Year 2002 is fast approaching.   RHCD urges all applicants who have not done so to submit their FCC Forms 465.  Doing so by the end of May ensures a full year of funding, as support is calculated from the 29th day of the 465's posting on the website.

Content Last Modified: March 24, 2003