US rural broadband funded, will support telehealth

Donna Cusano

Last Friday, just as we in the US were moving off to our July 4th holiday weekend, a $795 million government program was announced to develop rural broadband access, matched by $200 million in private funding.  Public funding will come from ARRA (Recovery Act) for 66 new broadband projects, including 900 healthcare facilities.  According to the grant recipients, 5000 jobs will be directly created as part of creating broadband access where it is scarce to nonexistent now. This editor [Donna] notes that the cost is $159,000 per job created, but enabling rural hospitals and clinics to deploy telehealth and telemedicine may just be…priceless.  Healthcare IT News