The View From Here
Brian Thibeau, President

Happy New Year 2025!! May we all look forward to a promising year filled with good work, good health, and precious time with family. 

Connections Telehealth Consortium (CTC) is a national consortium founded in 2014.  

CTC is an independent national non-profit (501c4) healthcare consortium dedicated to helping rural hospitals and healthcare providers improve communications, collaboration, and telehealth capabilities. It is the umbrella non-profit that administers several consortia across the United States under the Federal Communications Commission’s Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF), specifically its Rural Health Care (RHC) fund which subsidizes telecommunications services and equipment for eligible non-profit healthcare providers (HCP). Currently, there are seven (7) consortia under the CTC umbrella. They are: Kentucky Telehealth Consortium, Tennessee Telehealth Consortium, Texas Telehealth Consortium, Hawaii Telehealth Consortium, Gulf Coast Telehealth Consortium, American Telehealth Consortium, and the North Carolina Healthcare Consortium. Collectively, CTC is now supporting over 1,100 health care sites in 21 states.  

Unfortunately, there are legal challenges threatening the Rural Health Care Program and the Healthcare Connect Fund. Consumers’ Research, a non-profit legislative action group, brought a case challenging the Universal Service Fund Contribution mechanism’s constitutionality in three circuit courts of appeal. The Universal Service Fund Contribution mechanism entirely funds the Rural Health Care Program, and the Healthcare Connect Fund. Most recently, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that a constitutional violation existed and that the Universal Services Administrative Company (USAC) operated without sufficient oversight from the FCC.  The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed this term to review the constitutionality of the program as 2 of the 3 appeals courts upheld the constitutionality of the program. Only the 5th Circuit ruled to the contrary. Currently, the Connections Telehealth Consortium Board of Directors is authorizing its managing agent, HealthConnect Networks, to work with other entities to support filing an Amicus Curiae (friends of the court) brief supporting the Petitioners (the Federal Communications Commission) in defending the constitutionality of the program. Until the Supreme Court rules, the program remains in jeopardy. If the Court finds the mechanism unconstitutional, the resulting loss of HCF subsidy support to your healthcare site and thousands of other non-profit healthcare providers across the country would be devastating.   

At CTC, our managing agent, HealthConnect Networks, is continuing their efforts to obtain Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) Rural Health Care (RHC) program subsidies for the Health Care Providers (HCP) across our country that participate in one of the above consortia. For Fiscal Year 2023 (July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024) our managing agent enabled CTC to successfully submit 89 subsidy funding requests that captured over 3.5 million dollars in subsidy. For FY 24 (July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025) staff have submitted 117 subsidy funding requests totaling over $7.65 million for CTC health care providers. At this point in the FY24 year, USAC has only approved 69 applications, so only $965,000 has been captured to date. There are 46 applications still in progress representing 6.68 million dollars. 

In October, several CTC/HealthConnect Networks staff, in addition to myself, attended the annual Schools, Health, & Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB) AnchorNETS conference in Arlington, VA. We met with FCC and USAC staff for one-on-one discussions of current issues. Our extended meeting with USAC staff was very productive and we were very pleased to receive compliments from them regarding our attention to detail and compliance with best practices. Not often that one receives such positive comments. 

My thanks to the CTC Board members for their expertise, guidance, and service; Red Hutchinson, retired, LRG Healthcare, NH; David Valcik, retired, Northern Light Health, ME; Rick Cowan, Northern Light Health, ME; and Tim Smith, retired, ME. They continue to dedicate their time and energy to carry out their fiduciary responsibility to ensure CTC activities are conducted correctly, efficiently, and in compliance with applicable regulations.  

Thank you for your continued support of CTC and feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

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