Telehealth over Fiber

USAC - The Rural Health Care (RHC) Program

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) is an independent, not-for-profit corporation created in 1997 to collect universal service contributions from telecommunications carriers and administer universal support mechanisms (programs) designed to help communities across the country secure access to affordable telecommunications services. USAC carries out its functions as the administrator of the federal universal service programs and Universal Service Fund (USF) under the oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

USAC administers universal service programs for high cost companies in rural areas, low-income consumers, rural health care providers, and schools and libraries.

The Rural Health Care (RHC) Program supports health care facilities in bringing world class medical care to rural areas through increased connectivity. It provides up to $400 million annually in reduced rates for broadband and telecom services. There are two subprograms in the RHC Program: the Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) Program and the Telecommunications (Telecom) Program.

Eligible participants include public and most non-profit rural hospitals, clinics, and healthcare organizations. Program participants must carry out a competitive bidding process to select the most cost-effective companies to provide the goods and/or services requested.

Program participants may request funding in five categories of service: Telecommunications, Telecommunications Services, Internet Access, Internal Connections, and Basic Maintenance of Internal Connections. Discounts for support depend on the level of poverty and the rural status of the population served and range from 20 percent to 90 percent of the costs of eligible services.

A2D Healthcare Value Proposition

A2D is a USAC certified carrier. We are actively competing with other carries to provide Rural Healthcare Organizations across the US with competitively priced lit fiber wide area network (WAN) connectivity, and dark fiber solutions. Our goal is to establish a national telehealth network that enable secure, information sharing and exchange of vital healthcare information between regional hospitals, clinics, private practitioners and physicians, outpatient care facilities, pharmacies, and much more.

In addition to providing enhanced connectivity that links healthcare facilities, A2D expands the newly constructed network to deliver open access fiber connectivity to residents and business who reside near each connected healthcare facility. As a result, by trusting A2D to establish a healthcare network, the healthcare provider’s patients at home will be able to participate in telehealth across A2D’s eCommunity Intranet thus reducing the healthcare providers overall operational cost. The net result is the healthcare provider, the city/town/county, and the broader community benefits over the long-term.

Below are additional benefits of trusting A2D to support your healthcare technology needs:

Connecting Life-Critical Information

The speed and pace of change in healthcare isn’t slowing down, and neither are we. Isn’t it time for a technology partner that anticipates your needs for security, capacity and flexibility? Here’s how our network infrastructure can help:

SCALABILITY & FLEXIBILITY

What if you could meet your growing bandwidth needs for decades without an increase in cost? A high capacity, scalable, interconnected backbone handles evolving connectivity requirements better than any other. A2D’s dark or lit fiber will allow you to grow and maintain a stable budget for the long-term.

ENABLE DIGITAL HEALTH & BIG DATA

Technologies such as EHR, BYOD and real-time, high-definition video strain the capacity of legacy systems. A2D’s private healthcare cloud, colocation, and connectivity manage big data and big bandwidth like never before, and our SLAs guarantee uptime.

PRIVACY & SECURITY

A2D’s solutions may include HIPAA, FISMA, SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, and PCI compliant offerings. Options for private hardware and encryption offer you maximum network security, protecting your patients’ privacy.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY & DISASTER RECOVERY

Our urban and rural networks are interconnected directly with our data centers to keep every aspect of your technology ecosystem functioning in the midst of disruptive events. From urban hospital to rural clinic, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) will bring key IT resources - both data and systems - back online after a natural or human-induced disaster, as saving lives cannot be put on hold.

PRIVATE DEDICATED NETWORKS

Our dark fiber, wavelengths or Ethernet solutions can be customized to your specific needs on a network all your own. This allows you speed and access across hospitals, biosciences, health insurance, HIEs, and buildings throughout the network.

SPEED AND RESILIENCY

You and your patients don’t have time for a stalling EHR or unreliable application performance. A2D’s connectivity and manged data center services help you ensure seamless delivery of care.