Rural Health Care Home

Eligible Rural Areas Search

Complete the following steps to determine if your organization is located in a rural area for RHC Program eligibility. For further instructions, watch the How to Determine Rurality video. Note: This tool was updated on 8/18/14 to reflect the FCC's new Rural Areas List Order (DA 14-1042). For more information about the update, see the Latest News article about the update.

Find Your State and County:

Select your state in the drop-down menu below and click the "Search" button.
A list of all counties for that state will display in alphabetical order.
The "Rural Eligibility" column will identify if your county is urban, rural, or partly rural.
1. If a county is partly rural, census tract codes for the parts of that county that are rural will be listed. A tract code is a number given to a county or subsection of a county, and is used to provide statistical information related to the census. If your county is partly rural, read the instructions below to determine your census tract number.

Select a State:

Determine Your County's Census Tract Number or BNA:

To determine your county's census tract number, you can call your regional census bureau office for assistance, or visit the Texas A&M website to use their geocode location tool. As of July 2013, the RHC Program is using this tool instead of the FFIEC website.

Type in your organization's street address (do not enter a P.O. Box).
Select "TwoThousandTen" from the "Year of Census" drop down menu.
Click the "Geocode" button.
Write down the "Census Tract" number displayed under the "Best Geocode Output Census Values" box.
Compare this number to the census tract codes displayed in the RHC Eligible Rural Areas Search tool results for your state and county. If your census tract code is listed for your county, your site is eligible as rural. If you have any questions, email the RHC Help Desk or call us at (800) 453-1546.

Please Note: Searches with the Texas A&M tool are limited to 15 searches per IP address. If you plan to conduct more than 15 searches from a single IP address, you will need to register with the site.