Kudos to the FCC for its new Pilot Program for Enhanced Access to Advanced Telecommunications and Information Services: A Rural Health Care Support Program aimed at creating a nationwide broadband network dedicated to health care. Why? It recognizes two key facts about rural America. One, when it comes to health care (and many other things), rural areas are the nation's redheaded stepchild, the afterthought, the runt piglet (to use an agricultural metaphor). Two, a good way to help rural America is to help it connect — inside and out. Let me explain.

Scant capital — financial, human and otherwise — coupled with the difficulties in achieving economies of scale because of remoteness and low population density, thwart most go-it-alone rural community development efforts. Even with the will to win, rural communities more often than not lack the complete set of resources necessary. To succeed, rural entities — communities, businesses, governments, hospitals, etc. — must team up. They need to connect inside. They also need to connect outside — to the broader world of markets, resources and ideas.

The program promotes both. Better yet, it funds them; it will foot the bill for public and non-profit health care providers, including those serving rural America, to build state- and region-wide broadband networks for health care services.

The primary benefit of the program is obvious. It connects rural providers to one another other and an array of medical services and expertise found only in urban and suburban areas. Just as important, however, is its secondary benefit. With a successful regional health care network under their belts, rural folks might be willing to expand networks that would nurture economic development, education, etc. They'd be even more willing if other federal agencies followed the FCC's lead and promoted regional collaborations.

None of which is to say the pilot program is the be-all, end-all. Great as telemedicine is, it is better still to have face-to-face care — for health care reasons as well as economic and community development ones. The dollars paid to health care providers who live in the community circulate in the community. Likewise, the value of health professionals to a community goes beyond the health care they provide; it includes contributions they make to civic and social life. Don't get me wrong. We desperately need telemedicine in rural America. But we should not stop once we get it and assume the job is done. Telemedicine should be viewed as a transitional stage on the way to getting on-the-ground care in rural communities.

In the meantime, kudos to the FCC and the example it sets. Here's hoping other agencies follow it.

Thomas D. Rowley
is a syndicated columnist and fellow at the Rural Policy Research Institute. He can be reached at thomasrowley@mac.com