Rockefeller Seeks GAO Studies of FCC and Rural Health, Kids TV
The Government Accountability Office needs to study the FCC’s handling of a $400 million telemedicine program and the commission’s efforts to update children’s TV policies, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., wrote the GAO recently. More needs to be done than a pilot program on telehealth, aimed at using broadband, that the commission recently set up, he said. “I am concerned that the agency’s programs have not lived up to their statutory potential,” he said in his letter to Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro. We obtained a copy.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
With broadband infrastructure costs soaring, policymakers “must find ways to harness the power of telemedicine to provide quality and affordable care” to residents in rural areas, the letter said. A review of FCC rural health-care policies could provide a useful tool for policymakers interested in improving the programs, the letter said. Rockefeller asked to be a “co-requestor” for a review of the FCC’s rural health care programs that GAO is doing already.
The FCC set up the $417 million rural health-care program to increase patient access to care using telemedicine and electronic health records. The program is designed to ensure that rural health care providers pay no more than their urban counterparts for telecommunications services needed to provide health care. The commission established a pilot program, administered by the Universal Service Administrative Co., to help build out broadband telehealth projects.
The commission announced in April that it had approval to spend $46 million to build five telehealth networks linking hospitals in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming, and a separate project in Alaska. Across the country, 67 projects are eligible to receive funding for networks serving 6,000 health care facilities in 42 states and three U.S. territories. The FCC reported in an April statement that 29 of the projects had chosen vendors to build out networks. Some of the projects have run into difficulty and petitioned the commission for permission to merge. The most recent request came in August, when the commission issued an order allowing two projects to combine.
Rockefeller said in his letter to the GAO that he hopes to identify ways to “further develop the FCC’s present efforts.” “I believe a review of the FCC’s rural health care policies by [GAO] would provide a useful tool for policymakers interested in improving these vital programs.”
Rockefeller also is eager for the GAO to take a close look at the commission’s efforts to oversee the nearly two- decades-old Children’s Television Act. The committee held a hearing July 22 on ways that the law might be updated for the digital age. “As a follow-up to this hearing,” Rockefeller said, “I am interested in the efforts the agency makes to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the data that covered entities submit to demonstrate compliance with FCC rules adopted pursuant to the law.” The commission should study, among other questions, how programming serves the educational and informational needs of children ages 16 and under, Rockefeller said. “Are there industry standards for educational and informational programming? Are there problems with covered entities circumventing these requirements?”
The GAO also should review FCC procedures for ensuring compliance with rules relating to children’s programming, such as those limiting advertising, Rockefeller said. “I am interested in how the FCC makes the information it collects” about programming available to parents who might want to plan family TV viewing, he said. “In light of the significant role that television programming plays in the lives of our youngest viewers, I trust that the GAO will give this request full and fair consideration.”