News & Spotlights

HealthPoint at the Senate:  Fix the Funding Cliff

January 29th, 2019
Advocacy

HealthPoint at the Senate:  Fix the Funding Cliff

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HealthPoint’s CEO, Tom Trompeter, had the exciting opportunity to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about the importance of community health centers.

Tom was one of four representatives who spoke on January 29 at the hearing in Washington, DC, called “Access to Care: Health Centers and Providers in Underserved Communities.” The goal of the hearing was to encourage legislators to maintain the crucial financial support from the federal government that enables HealthPoint to provide care to all.

Here are the takeaways from Tom’s testimony:

  • Three federal grants that HealthPoint and many other health care providers rely on are set to expire in the coming year. Community health organizations like ours are facing a funding cliff. This uncertainty threatens the primary care network across the country and puts our ability to help patients and train providers at risk.​
    • The Community Health Center Fund provides billions of dollars of stable and adequate long-term funding for the critical care we provide underserved communities.
    • HealthPoint is deeply engaged in training the next generation of health center providers through our primary care residency programs. This work is possible because of the Teaching Health Center program.
    • An essential tool for recruiting new clinicians to work at HealthPoint is provided through the National Health Service Corps’ Loan Repayment Program. Often, these clinicians decide to build a career in community health once they see the important work we do in our health centers.

Tom urged the HELP Committee to move forward with legislation to extend funding to the Community Health Center Fund, National Health Service Corps, and the Teaching Health Centers program for an additional five years.

And while our foundational funding is still uncertain, the Federal Government is taking the right steps by recently providing additional funding to support mental health and substance use disorder services. This supplemental funding will enable HealthPoint to increase our capacity to remove barriers and provide opportunities for more high-risk patients to access care.

Take action!

UPDATE 2/19: The Health Center Advocacy Network has created an online tool to take action on Senate funding legislation for community health centers.

In Washington state, HealthPoint supporters should thank Senator Patty Murray for holding this hearing and introducing legislation to reauthorize these funds along with Senator Lamar Alexander. Ask your family and friends in other states to thank their Senators for supporting funds for primary healthcare, health centers and primary care training programs around the country. Members of the Senate HELP committee can be found here.