FCC Takes Steps to Fund All FY 2018 Services in the Rural Health Care Program

With this Order, the Federal Communications Commission takes necessary steps to provide full funding for all eligible services requested from the Rural Health Care universal service support mechanism (RHC Program) for the 2018 funding year (FY). In FY 2018, multi-year and upfront payment funding requests filed during the window sought support exceeding the $150 million funding cap for those payments. FCC rules would require the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to prorate requested support received by eligible health care providers. To avoid significant pro-rata reductions in support for multi-year and upfront payment requests and to ensure that all eligible funding requests seeking support for services to be delivered in FY 2018 are fully funded, the FCC suspends on its own motion the FCC’s rule allowing for multi-year commitments in the Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF Program) for FY 2018 and direct USAC to process these requests as single-year funding requests. This action will ensure that rural health care providers can continue to obtain critical communications-based technologies for the delivery of health care services to their communities.