Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday released $81.7 million in non-stimulus package funding to help expand community health center services.
The new funding will be added to the $2 billion already provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) last February.
According to cofficials, the funding is critical in helping to provide healthcare to an increasing population of uninsured. Some hope to use funding to adopt healthcare IT to streamline services.
The Health Center Program provided care to more than 17 million people last year. The new grants, to be provided under the program, will include $25.6 million to expand medical capacity at 54 health centers, helping an additional 230,000 individuals in 25 states receive primary healthcare services. The remaining $56.1 million will supplement all health centers' base grant awards to offset rising costs associated with maintaining current service levels.
In a Thursday press telephone conference, Health Resources and Services Administration Administrator Mary Wakefield said some ARRA funds will be used to support HIT. Those resources will be made available in late summer or early fall, she said. HRSA will begin accepting grant applications in early June.
Health center directors on the press call agreed that funding for healthcare IT in community care centers would be beneficial. Mary Bufwack, CEO of United Health Services, a community health center in Nashville, Tenn., said her system already has basic electronic health records in at least five sites. EHRs, she said, help to avoid duplication of services and keep medication information accurate in a population that often tends to be transient.
"It is extremely necessary in our operations," she said.
Kim Patton, CEO of HealthSource of Ohio, a community health center in southwest Ohio, said her system spreads across five counties, has 15 sites and deals with seven hospitals. "For us, it would be a wonderful thing to have connectivity between the hospitals and our sites," she said.
Patton noted the waste in duplicate testing due to paper records. Healthcare IT would provide "amazing savings," she said, adding that some rural areas like hers have only just now received the broadband service to allow electronic records.
Ricardo Guzman, CEO of a community health center in Detroit, said money has been the issue all along for centers to adopt health IT. "There has been some money, but not enough for the level and scope needed by many of community health centers in the past," he said.
