FCC Updates Rural Areas List for Healthcare Program Eligibility

The FCC Wireline Bureau updated the list it uses for determining rural health care program eligibility to reflect the 2020 census. On Tuesday, the bureau also granted a waiver for FY 2025 of its eligibility rules for existing providers. In an order in docket 02-60 it said that it will "allow health care providers whose status has changed from rural to urban to continue to participate in the RHC program as if they were rural." The "once-per-decade update to areas identified as rural creates special circumstances justifying our action to ease impacted health care providers’ transitions," the order said. It noted that many sites "play an important role in delivering health care and a sudden change in eligibility due to the loss of a health care provider’s rural status could have a serious effect on its ability to deliver needed health care services to patients in a given area."