Local Health Centers Receive HHS Funds

SAN BERNARDINO>> Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced $12,435,669 in funding for 168 health centers in California, including two in San Bernardino and one in Moreno Valley, for health information technology enhancements. The Community Health Systems, Inc in Moreno Valley received a grant of $80,341, the SAC Health System received a grant of $60,090, and The Inland Behavioral and Health Services, Inc., received a grant of $56,448. In total, the announcement includes $87 million in funding for 1,310 health centers in every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Pacific Basin. “Health centers across the country are instrumental in providing high-quality, comprehensive primary health care to millions of people,” Burwell said. “This investment will help unlock health care data and put it to work, improving health outcomes and building a better health care system for the American people.” The funding will support health information technology enhancements to accelerate health centers’ transition to value-based models of care, improve efforts to share and use information to support better decisions and increase engagement in delivery system transformation. To support these goals, all purchases or upgrades of electronic health record systems made with the funding must use technology that is certified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. According to a press release, this is the first significant investment since 2009 directly awarded to health centers to support the purchase of health information technology. “These awards will allow health centers to deliver higher quality of care to patients and spend health care dollars in a smarter way,” said Jim Macrae, Health Resources and Services Administration Acting Administrator. Nearly 1,400 health centers operating over 9,800 sites provide care to more than 24 million people across this nation, in every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Pacific Basin. Today, health centers employ nearly 190,000 people. This funding comes from the Affordable Care Act’s Community Health Center Fund, which was extended with bipartisan support in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015. The increased use of health information technology is part of the administration’s efforts to build a health care system that delivers better care, smarter spending and healthier people.