LITTLE ROCK — Five low-income health clinics in Arkansas were awarded grants totaling nearly $11.2 million in May and June - part of $857 million in such Affordable Care Act awards nationwide that health officials say will help serve more patients, cut expensive emergency room visits and create health-care jobs.The grants came at a time when clinic supporters feared the effects of Congress’ $600 million in cuts to the community health centers’ fiscal 2011 budgets and shortly before a draft appropriations bill was passed that would rescind $300 million of their Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act funding for fiscal 2013.
In all, $857 million in grants were awarded May 2 and June 20 to clinics around the country known as “federally qualified health centers.”
All of the grants have been funded, said Martin A. Kramer, communications director for the grantor, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.
The federally qualified centers are parent clinics authorized to apply for such grants for their own clinics or satellite clinics.
The largest of the Arkansas awards was a $5 million Capital Development-Building Capacity grant that went to East Arkansas Family Health Center Inc. to build a new facility in West Memphis.
It also received a $900,079 New Access Point grant to open a new clinic in Helena- West Helena and a $499,266 Capital Development Immediate Facility Improvement grant to renovate its Lepanto satellite clinic, said Chris Hughes, a spokesman for the state association, Community Health Centers of Arkansas Inc.
In Augusta, a parent clinic known as ARcare also received one grant in each of the three categories.
“Dr. Steven Collier is our [chief executive officer], and he’s the mastermind of our vision of these projects,” said Joey Miller, ARcare’s chief operations officer.
One $2.8 million grant will build an upgraded center for ARcare’s flagship Augusta clinic, she said. The new primary-care clinic will also serve as a longevity center.
“That’s a fancy word for an aging, chronic-disease management and cancer center,” Miller said.
A $441,595 grant will enable ARcare to build a new primary-care clinic in Melbourne and a $499,000 award will help them update an old health center in Brinkley.
The Brinkley renovation will allow ARcare - the former White River Rural Health Center Inc. - to expand from serving 5,000 patients annually to about 8,000, Miller said.
In all, ARcare’s 27 medical clinics, three dental clinics and two pharmacies serve more than 35,000 patients annually in the state’s northeast and central regions.
“That results in 120,000 encounters,” Miller said, adding the center also operates in 17 locations statewide as a vendor for the Ryan White HIV Case Management Program.
MEDICAL AND DENTAL
Springdale-based Community Clinic, a parent center with a system of three medical clinics, two dental clinics and two school-based health clinics, got a $500,000 grant.
It will use it to expand its medical and dental clinics at its flagship Springdale location.
“This expansion will allow the clinic to increase access to health care to an additional 5,300 patients over the next two years,” said Tyler B. Clark, its community development manager.
Th e fa mily practice, Community Clinic Springdale Medical, will increase its exam rooms to 15. Three will be for mental health and there also will be offices for diabetes education, help with prescriptions and case management.
Community Clinic Springdale Dental will gain four exam rooms.
“We will hire two new family practice providers and an additional dental provider,” said Community Clinic’s executive director, Kathy Grisham, adding that the former would be some combination of at least one physician and either a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant.
Other Arkansas clinics on the award list were Boston Mountain Rural Health Center Inc. in Marshall, with $379,167 to open a new center in Yellville and Corning Area Healthcare Inc. in Corning, with $153,620 to remodel its Pocahontas clinic, Hughes said.
HELPING COMMUNITIES
The parent and satellite community health centers are not free clinics.
They serve patients on an income-based, sliding-fee scale. They must meet certain other criteria to qualify for federal grant funding, such as offering comprehensive primary health care services.
Grants for the centers come from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. It is the federal government’s primary agency for helping communities defined as “medically under served,” which takes into account insufficient primary care providers, high infant death rates, high poverty and high elderly populations.
Each clinic must be governed by a community board composed of 51 percent or more of health-center patients.
According to White House documents, publicly funded community health centers around the country were able to increase the number of patients served from 17 million to 20 million primarily because of an $11 billion investment in operations and capital funding that came from the 2010 Affordable Care Act as well as earlier funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
“In FY [fiscal] 2011, the first $1 billion of these funds were awarded,” the White House report said of the health-care law funding. The Recovery Act’s $2 billion in funding came in 2009 and 2010.
So far, the health care overhaul law has already paid for the construction and renovation of 190 capital projects at health centers around the country, it said, and the creation of 67 new clinic sites. It is expected to support more new construction and renovation at 485 sites and build more than 245 new clinics during the next two years.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 08/21/2012