Continue reading »]]> On today’s show, we talk about USAC’s rural health program and the process that healthcare providers must undertake to receive subsidies for critical telecommunications links to rural facilities.  Even if you work in a large metropolitan area, if your hospital or clinic is partnering with smaller facilities or has outreach facilities located in rural parts of the country, you should listen to today’s show.  The potential to have the cost between the rural rate and the urban rate for telecommunications and Internet service for healthcare providers is substantial.  The services that USAC commonly subsidizes are ATM, Centrex, DSL, Ethernet, Fiber, Fractional T1′s, Frame Relay, Internet, ISDN, Mileage related charges, MPLS, Network Reconfiguration Services (NRS), OC-1, OC-3, Redundant Circuits, Satellite Services, Telephony Services, T1′s, T3′s, and DS3′s.

Background

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) funds the FCC’s Universal Service Fund.  There are four programs that USAC administers, the high cost program, the low income program, the E-Rate program for schools and libraries, and the rural health program.  You can find out how much money was disbursed to telecommunication providers in various states in 2010 here.

Important information about how to go about applying for universal service fund subsidies, as well as information essential to developing a selection process is available in the podcast, as well as in the links below.

• Determining if your service area is considered “rural”
• Rural Healthcare Welcome Packet
• USAC Rural Healthcare Events
• USAC Terminology
• USAC Forms

I hope this short primer on USAC helps some of you gain access to funds that may help you improve the healthcare infrastructure of your rural and outreach facilities.  If you have any questions, or if you have additional tips, you are welcome to add them here, or email me at spencer@itpodcast.org.

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Spencer Hamons

Continue reading »]]> In this week’s podcast I want to talk about how to be environmentally conscious in your IT operations, without spending a million dollars, and while making good business sense.

As always, I welcome your comments either here on the blog, or by emailing me directly at spencer@itpodcast.org.

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The articles that I reference in the podcast are linked below:

IEEE ratifies 802.11r standard to enhance VoIP over Wi-Fi handoffs

Comcast puts the screws to customers downloading over 250GB per month

Google Chrome?

I thank you for listening to this podcast, and as always I welcome your comments either directly to this blog…or you can email me directly at spencer@itpodcast.org.The next podcast will be available on September 20, 2008