FCC Announces Last Set of Awards for Connected Care Pilot Program

The Federal Communications Commission is finishing off its Connected Care Pilot Program, a three-year, $100 million initiative aimed at supporting more than 100 health systems across the country in buying digital health equipment and extending broadband connectivity to improve healthcare access for underserved communities.

The Federal Communications Commission has announced almost $30 million in funding for 16 projects in 15 states through its Connected Care Pilot Program, which supports healthcare organizations in buying technology or extending broadband connectivity for programs aimed at improving access to care for underserved populations.

With this announcement, the FCC is effectively closing out the $100 million program, which was launched in January 2021 and now supports 107 projects in 40 states and Washington DC.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the program will help the agency map out a strategy for the future of connected care and federal support.

“Although this is the last set of participants we are announcing in this program, it’s not the end,” she said in a separate press release. “That’s because we will be studying the award recipients in this program, the connections they used, and how they helped facilitate care. In fact, at the start of this effort, we announced we would produce a report when the three-year pilot program is complete. But I don’t think we should wait that long. So that’s why I’m announcing a new study today. By this time next year, the FCC staff will develop an interim report about initial lessons learned from this program and the COVID-19 Telehealth Program, which provided nearly $450 million in support for care during the pandemic. I look forward to this report informing our thinking about telemedicine going forward.”

The Connected Care Pilot Program was seen as a means of supporting healthcare organizations in launching or expanding programs through telehealth and digital health channels that address critical health disparities and access issues. It targeted issues like maternal mortality and pediatric healthcare, veterans’ service, behavioral health and substance abuse programs, and broadband connectivity, which often serves as a barrier to accessing care in both urban and rural areas.

The latest round of award recipients includes the Boston Community Medical Group, which will launch a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform to serve 22,000 low-income patients across Massachusetts; Children’s Hospital of Denver, which is planning a remote patient monitoring program for roughly 200 low-income patients living with medically complex conditions; Christiana Care Health Services in Delaware, which is launching an RPM and telehealth program for prenatal monitoring for an estimated 5,000 low-income patients; the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments in Alaska, which is expanding RPM and other virtual care services for almost 6,000 veterans and other underserved patients across the state; and the New England Telehealth Consortium, which is expanding its connected care platform to serve more veterans and other patients in New Hampshire and Maine.

In a separate press release, FCC Commission Brendan Carr said the agency needs to “make sure that these services have a stable, long-term funding model” and that program be studied to determine how to develop and sustain more projects.

“Furthermore, it has become clear that there is bipartisan support for legislative measures that may be necessary to keep the success of telehealth going,” he said. “For instance, there have long been a range of licensing and reimbursement issues that held back telehealth prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services, with urging from Congress, helped facilitate greater access to telehealth services through the issuance of key waivers. For example, HHS has allowed more types of providers to bill Medicare for telehealth services and granted waivers for the reimbursement of audio-only telehealth services. While these waivers are set to expire at the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, we cannot afford a return to the status quo once the pandemic ends. We have made too much progress to move backwards.”

With President Biden’s signing of the 2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act at just about the same time Carr penned his letter, Congress did extend many of the CMS telehealth waivers for an additional 151 days after the end of the PHE. Carr’s point is that Congress needs to set a long-term policy for connected health, and he’s advocating for a pair of bills: the CONNECT for Health Act, which has support from more than half of the Senate and would make many of those emergency telehealth provisions permanent; and the Protecting Rural Telehealth Access Act, which would also permanently extend a number of the CMS waivers.