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Vizient Supports FCC Chairman's Proposed Funding Increase for Rural Telehealth ProgramVizient, Inc. is adding its support to a recent request by Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for an increase in funding for the Rural Health Care Program. If approved, the order would take immediate action to address the program's significant funding shortfall and enable rural health care providers to continue offering telemedicine services. The program's current annual funding cap is $400 million. The cap was set in 1997 and never indexed for inflation. Recently, demand for funding under the program has outpaced the budget, creating uncertainty for patients, health care providers, and communications companies alike. Over the last two years, the $400M limit has resulted in funding for Vizient member health systems utilizing the program to decrease from 100 percent to roughly 70 percent. For rural health care providers, this has been detrimental to their ability to maintain strong broadband connections. Furthermore, it could force these providers to make tough decisions on funding for essential health care services. Immediately raising the cap, adjusting it annually for inflation, and allowing unused funds from prior years to be carried forward to fture years, would give all providers long-term certainty about universal service funding. Vizient is the nation's largest health care performance improvement company serving a diverse membership that includes academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, community hospitals, integrated health care delivery networks and non-acute health care providers. About Vizient, Inc. Vizient, Inc., the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country, provides innovative data-driven solutions, expertise and collaborative opportunities that lead to improved patient outcomes and lower costs. Vizient's diverse membership base includes academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, community hospitals, integrated health delivery networks and non-acute health care providers and represents approximately $100 billion in annual purchasing volume. The Vizient brand identity represents the integration of VHA Inc., University HealthSystem Consortium and Novation, which combined in 2015, as well as MedAssets' Spend and Clinical Resource Management (SCM) segment, including Sg2, which was acquired in 2016. In 2018, Vizient again received a World's Most Ethical Company designation from the Ethisphere Institute. Vizient's headquarters are in Irving, Texas, with locations in Chicago and other cities across the United States. Please visit www.vizientinc.com as well as our newsroom, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube pages for more information about the company.
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