Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin announced plans Tuesday to spend more than $400 million over three years to build broadband networks that will connect health care providers with others in their states or regions and with the emerging National Health Information Network.
Martin visited this month’s meeting of the American Health Information Community in Chicago to make his announcement, which drew applause from Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and other members of the high-level HHS advisory panel.
“There is not another part of our economy where investment will pay more lasting social benefits,” Leavitt told the AHIC meeting in introducing Martin. He called the proposal an energizing event in pursuit of AHIC’s goal to accelerate health care information exchange.
AHIC member Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, called the program a significant advance that would be “welcome news for the emergency response community.”
The proposal would expand the Rural Health Care Pilot Program the FCC launched in September 2006. It would connect 6,000 providers, including hospitals, clinics, public health agencies, universities and research centers, Martin said.
The program calls for deploying regional networks that will be connected to the Internet and another national backbone network, either Internet2 or National LambdaRail.
It will pay up to 85 percent of the costs of constructing dedicated broadband networks within a state or region and connecting them to the national networks.
Leavitt asked Martin whether FCC would consider making the grants conditional on the acceptance of health information interoperability standards associated with the National Health Information Network.
Martin was doubtful the awards could be made explicitly conditional, but he welcomed collaboration with the health information technology community. “The window of coordination is just beginning,” he said.
The commission has received 81 applications for the funds, Martin said, adding that he expects it to begin disbursing the money as early as next week. The applicants are from 42 states and three U.S. territories, he said.
He told the AHIC that the projects to be funded include large-scale, multistate networks, smaller ones in regional areas, connections to isolated rural areas such as Indian reservations and telehealth applications for rural areas. In some cases, the networks are already in place, but their developers will be reimbursed for eligible costs.
The networks are encouraged to comply with HHS-backed health IT standards and coordinate with public health authorities during health emergencies, Martin said.
“In order to receive the benefits of electronic health care records, health care providers must have access to underlying broadband infrastructure,” Martin said. “Without this underlying infrastructure, efforts to implement electronic health care records cannot succeed.”
The funds will come from the Universal Service Fund, which is supported by fees paid by long-distance telephone companies. About $400 million a year is available for health care, but Martin said last year that only about 10 percent of that sum is disbursed each year.
Martin’s plan must receive approval from the commission, but it’s unlikely that his fellow commissioners will reject the plan. They unanimously endorsed the original plan for a two-year pilot program.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
