Dive Brief:
- HHS on July 8 announced the availability of $100 million in Affordable Care Act funds to expand access to primary care through new community health centers. The money is expected to fund about 150 new health center sites across the country in 2015.
- The new centers will add to an existing network of 550-plus new health center sites that have opened in the past three years as a result of the Affordable Care Act, HHS said.
- Currently, nearly 1,300 health centers operate more than 9,200 service delivery sites providing services to more than 21 million patients in every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Pacific Basin, HHS said.
Dive Insight:
HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the ACA's funding for the expansion is critical because community health centers are providing "vital" healthcare in communities that need the services most.
In addition, health centers also provide outreach and enrollment activities trying to help uninsured individuals and others find affordable coverage options under the ACA, according to HHS. Since last fall, the centers have helped enroll more than 4.7 million people into plans nationwide.
The community health centers' history is long. In recent years, the clinics have been aided by funds from the ACA and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in trying to meet rising demand for primary health care services among uninsured and underserved, vulnerable populations. But these centers, governed by community boards, actually have worked in medically underserved areas for more than 45 years. Now they are on the front-lines of the Obama administration's efforts to make reform work, even as they expand primary care services into additional underserved areas in the U.S.