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Community Health Centers Help the Unisured

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Community Health Centers Help the Unisured

March 2, 2009 by Maite Arce  
Filed under Health

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According to the National Association of Community Health Centers, there are 1,200 Community Health Centers spread across 50 states and all U.S. territories, that provide vital primary care to 18 million Americans with limited financial resources.

These Community Health Centers provide vital health services to many Hispanics living in the United States, in particular those without health insurance. Health centers maintain an open-door policy, providing treatment regardless of an individual’s income or insurance coverage. They serve the homeless, residents of public housing, migrant farm workers and others with emergent and chronic health care needs, but limited resources to secure treatment through traditional channels.

Community health centers provide a highly cost-effective model that should be considered by those seeking to solve the nation’s health care crisis. Among some of the benefits are:

• Improve Access to Primary and Preventive Care. Health centers provide preventive services to vulnerable populations that would otherwise not have access to certain services, such as immunizations, health education, mammograms, pap smears, and other screenings. Low income, uninsured health center patients are much more likely to have a usual source of care than the uninsured nationally. Moreover, uninsured people living within close proximity to a health center are less likely to have an unmet medical need, less likely to visit the emergency room or have a hospital stay, and more likely to have had a general medical visit compared to other uninsured.

• Cost-Effective Care. Care received at health centers is ranked among the most cost-effective. Several studies have found that health centers save the Medicaid program around 30% in annual spending for health center Medicaid beneficiaries. Furthermore, health centers generate savings for the entire health care system of up $17.6 billion a year. These savings are the result of less reliance on costly specialty, inpatient, and emergency room care. Furthermore, if avoidable visits to emergency rooms were redirected to health centers, over $18 billion in annual health care costs could be saved nationally.

• High Quality of Care. Studies have found that the quality of care provided at health centers is equal to or greater than the quality of care provided elsewhere. Moreover, 99% of surveyed patients report that they were satisfied with the care they receive at health centers.

• Reduction of Health Disparities. Disparities in health status do not exist among health center patients, even after controlling for socio-demographic factors. The absence of such disparities at health centers may be related to their culturally sensitive practices and community involvement – features that other primary care settings often lack. Moreover, as more of a state’s low income population is served by health centers, racial and ethnic health disparities in key areas are reduced across the state.

• Effective Management of Chronic Illness. Health centers meet or exceed nationally accepted practice standards for treatment of chronic conditions. In fact, the Institute of Medicine and the Government Accountability Office have recognized health centers as models for screening, diagnosing, and managing chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, depression, cancer, and HIV. Health centers’ efforts have led to improved health outcomes for their patients, as well as lowered the cost of treating patients with chronic illness.

• Improve Birth Outcomes. Health centers also improve access to timely prenatal care. Communities served by health centers have infant mortality rates at least 10% lower than comparable communities not served by health centers. Women of low socioeconomic status seeking care at health centers experience lower rates of low birth weight compared to all such mothers. This trend holds for each racial/ethnic group.

• Create Jobs and Stimulate Economic Growth. In addition to health care savings, health centers also bring much needed economic benefits to the low income communities they serve. Their overall economic impact reaches $12.6 billion annually, while also producing 143,000 jobs some of the country’s most economically deprived neighborhoods.

Learn more about community health centers through the National Association of Community Health Centers.