Affirming FCC Chairman Pai’s “commitment to driving the future of health care delivery and supporting innovative pilot projects across the country,” the FCC released a Public Notice on November 5, 2020, announcing that the agency will begin accepting applications for its Connected Care Pilot Program (“Pilot Program”) through the Universal Service Administrative Company’s (“USAC”) website. The application filing window opened today, Friday, November 6, 2020 at 12:00 PM ET and will close on Monday, December 7, 2020 at 11:59 PM ET. Applicants are strongly encouraged to submit applications as soon as possible after the window opens, to ensure complete and accurate applications before the close of the window.

As we previously reported, the Pilot Program will make available $100 million in funding over three years to help defray eligible health care providers’ costs of providing connected care services (e.g., remote patient monitoring, patient health education, “store-and-forward” services, and video consultations and visits), with a particular emphasis on supporting those services for low-income Americans and veterans. Examples of eligible and ineligible services are included in Appendix A to the Public Notice.

Eligibility for funding under the Pilot Program is limited to certain public and non-profit health care providers. A health care provider, if it has not already, will be required to request an eligibility determination by filing an FCC Form 460, available here, with USAC and obtaining a Health Care Provider Number for each health care provider site at which funding will be used.

For more information about the Pilot Program and application requirements, please see our previous posts here and here.