Community health centers receive $728M in federal grant money
Occupying a former medical offices building in Maine’s largest city, Portland Community Health Center serves about 2,600 of the city’s population of just over 66,000. Its patient population is largely on Medicaid and about 35 percent of them have no insurance at all. Half are refugees from countries such as Sudan and Somalia.
The disjointed nature of its facility means that in some areas there is too much space for the need and in others, there is not enough space. But a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will change the nonprofit health center’s physical constrictions.
The Portland Community Health Center, a federally-qualified health center, is one of three CHCs in Maine to receive grants from HHS. The federal agency announced Tuesday that it was awarding more than $728 million in grants supporting 398 renovation and construction projects across the country. The grants are part of capital investment funds for CHCs made available through the Affordable Care Act. The ACA provided $9.5 billion to expand CHC services over five years, with $1.5 billion designated for construction and renovation projects. The grants fund two CHC programs: the Building Capacity Program and the Immediate Facility Improvement Program.
“With this new infusion of funds from both of these categories combined, health centers will be now better able to meet the growing demand for patient services,” said Mary Wakefield, RN, PhD, the administrator of HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration during a media teleconference call Tuesday. “They’ll have more modern space that is capable of housing new and upgraded equipment. They’ll be able to improve care delivery and enhance access to healthcare services.”
The Portland Community Health Center and Maine’s two other grantees – Penobscot Community Health Center in Bangor and Pines Health Service in Caribou – received grants of $500,000, $498,173 and $270,000, respectively, through the Immediate Facility Improvement Program.
The Portland Community Health Center is already moving forward with putting the money to use, said Leslie Brancato, the health center’s CEO. “A lot of it is very practical and much needed,” she said.
Plans are to expand into space that is currently not usable, to add exam rooms and otherwise expand capacity, to make updates that will bring the health center up to the Americans with Disabilities Act standards, to make the health center more aesthetically welcoming to patients and to reshape the space to allow for integrated care teams to work together in the same areas.
Like health centers across the country, the Portland Community Health Center has been seeing an increase in demand for its services. Brancato said the Portland health center has recently been seeing 50 to 60 new patients a week. Nationwide, since 2009, CHCs have seen an increase of 3 million new patients. The country’s CHCs serve about 20 million people and that is expected to increase by 1.3 million over the next two years, said a new report on CHCs released by the Obama administration yesterday.
“The investments the Obama administration is making today will serve to further strengthen these centers so that they can continue to provide vital preventive and primary care services to the millions of people who count on them for care,” said Wakefield during Tuesday’s teleconference.
The Portland Community Health Center has a goal of serving about 4,500 patients by next year with the help of the federal government’s grant and also expects to hire more clinicians to meet the demand of additional patients.
“It’ll make a big difference to the community and the patients that we serve,” said Brancato.
Follow HFN managing editor Stephanie Bouchard on Twitter @SBouchardHFN.
