The Universal Service Fund has quietly underpinned rural health care for decades.
By JORDAN ROGERS
In rural America, broadband isn’t a luxury — it’s a lifeline. From telemedicine to cloud-based patient records, health care depends on high-speed, reliable internet. For decades, the Universal Service Fund (USF) has helped make telehealth available by ensuring affordable broadband in rural areas and connecting rural health care providers to their urban counterparts.
Now, this critical source of funding for health care connectivity is at risk. The Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of USF this summer. A negative decision could mean the fund would cease to exist in a matter of weeks. If this happens, more than 16,000 mostly rural health care providers, would be face even greater financial challenges, potentially impacting their ability to provide life-saving health care.
Here are three things policymakers need to know:
1. Medical-grade broadband is a critical need for health care
Hospitals and health care facilities throughout the country need medical-grade broadband providing dedicated, reliable, highly secure connections. Unlike commercial broadband utilized by residential homes and businesses, medical-grade broadband connections are symmetric and unshared — which means no slowdowns or outages due to too many users on the network at the same time. This is critical whether providing two-way telehealth video consults, sharing high-resolution medical images, storing and updating patient records in real-time in the cloud, or using AI to help transcribe a patient chart.
2. USF offsets prohibitive costs for health care providers
Health care providers, particularly, those in rural areas operate on razor-thin margins, and medical-grade broadband, while critically needed, is not always available or affordable. For some health care organizations, the cost of a medical grade connection alone exceeds the rest of the operating budget without support from the USF. These secure and highly reliable connections are especially crucial when disaster strikes. Thanks to a USF-funded connection, a rural North Carolina Federally Qualified Health Center was up and running just days after Hurricane Helene swept through the area. For many communities, USF-supported connectivity for health care providers is the only thread keeping health care running.
Without funding support, many health care organizations will be forced to downgrade the broadband connectivity they need for telehealth, patient records, diagnostics or even basic communication. Entire communities could lose access to health care, forcing patients to travel hours for medical attention, delaying treatment and putting lives at risk.
3. Even a short disruption in USF funding could shut down services
If funding were to stop — even just for a few months — some health care providers would be forced to downgrade service, pause programs or shut down entirely. When broadband fails, the consequences for patients are immediate and severe.
The Universal Service Fund has quietly underpinned health care in rural, underserved, and overlooked areas for decades, and the stakes are too high to wait to see how the Supreme Court rules. Congress must protect the critical infrastructure that keeps health care accessible for rural communities before it’s too late.
Jordan Rogers is Director of Relationship Marketing for the North Carolina Telehealth Network Association (NCTNA). NCTNA helps bring medical-grade broadband to hundreds of small, rural, under-resourced, and often overlooked health care facilities — from the mountains of Western NC to the Outer Banks.