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Months Into The Covid-19 Pandemic, Community Health Centers Report Signs Of Improvement, But Face Financial Uncertainty, Jessica Sharac, James Hernandez, Feygele Jacobs, Peter Shin

Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative

Executive Summary:

This policy brief reports on the COVID-19 experience of the nation’s community health centers over a six-month period, utilizing data from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA’s) weekly Health Center COVID-19 Survey from April 3rd, 2020 to October 2nd, 2020. The data demonstrate that community health centers were immediately responsive to the public health crisis, initiating diagnostic testing for the COVID-19 virus, and adapting care such as telehealth to address patient needs. However, with visits down overall and limited financial relief, the pandemic has taken an enormous financial toll on health centers. Cumulative patient revenue losses over …

Community Health Centers And Medicaid Payment Reform: Emerging Lessons From Medicaid Expansion States, Peter Shin, Jessica Sharac, Zoe Barber, Sara J. Rosenbaum

Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative

Community health centers represent a major source of primary health care for the nation’s Medicaid beneficiaries. Because the Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) payment system is encounter-based, health centers and Medicaid agencies in ACA expansion states are actively pursuing payment reforms that will enable health centers to adopt strategies that can more effectively respond to the considerable and complex health and social needs of people served by health centers, and more efficiently address the surging volume of patient care. In five expansion states whose alternative payment experiments are underway, health centers and Medicaid agencies are testing payment alternatives, such as …

Puerto Rico’S Community Health Centers In A Time Of Crisis, Peter Shin, Jessica Sharac, Marie Nina Luis, Sara J. Rosenbaum

Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative

In 2014, Puerto Rico’s twenty federally funded community health centers, operating in 71 sites located throughout the Commonwealth, served 330,736 patients, approximately one in ten Commonwealth residents. Compared to other Puerto Rico residents, health center patients are less likely to be insured. Despite considerable growth in Medicaid as a result of the supplemental funding provided under the Affordable Care Act, in 2014, 12.2% of health center patients remained uninsured.

Compared to health centers outside Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico’s health centers show a greater proportion of Medicaid patients served (69% compared to 46% outside Puerto Rico), a greater dependence on physician …

How Has The Affordable Care Act Benefitted Medically Underserved Communities? : National Findings From The 2014 Community Health Centers Uniform Data System, Jessica Sharac, Peter Shin, Sara J. Rosenbaum

Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative

Community health centers represent the single largest comprehensive primary health care system serving medically underserved communities, operating in more than 9,000 urban and rural locations. Newly-released data for 2014 from the Uniform Data System (UDS; the federal health center reporting system) shed important light on the impact of the Affordable Care Act in its first full year of implementation in medically underserved urban and rural communities across the U.S. These communities experience elevated poverty, heightened health risks, lack of access to primary health care, and a significantly greater likelihood that residents will be uninsured.

The UDS data show the ACA’s …