Immediate Demand: Federal Dollars to Stimulate Community Health Care, Jobs

In a previous blog post, I wrote about how federal stimulus dollars will flow to community health centers.

Now, we have some more details. Through the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, the US Department of Health and Human Services will soon distribute $337.9M to 1,128 community health centers in 50 states, Puerto Rico and other territories.

Named, Immediate Demand for Services (IDS) funds, these dollars are meant to assist health centers in providing primary health care services to a large number of people who have lost jobs and therefore their health care coverage. Currently 8.5% of workers are unemployed in the US. (Read more...)


With these dollars, health centers propose to serve 2.1 million new patients over the next 2 years. Half of the new patients will lack health insurance, and the majority of the other half will likely be dependent of state and federal programs such as Medicaid, which insures the lowest income Americans, including most low income children.

Nationally, community health centers serve almost 18 million individuals regardless of the ability to pay. IDS funds will promote an 11% increase in community health center enrollment over 2 years according to estimates.

Health centers provide economical health care services. The per patient federal outlay through these stimulus dollars is only $159.62. Health centers will likely look to other sources to meet the needs of supporting services to these patients on a long term basis.

Health centers also propose to create or retain 6,400 jobs in primary health care over the next 2 years: health care practitioners and support staff.

More about Illinois:  36 community health centers in Illinois will share $15M in Increased Demand for Services funds over 2 years.  An estimated 66,000 patients will be added in Illinois, a 6.6% growth rate over 2 years,  and 50% will be uninsured.  Approximately 270 jobs will be added or retained. Illinois community health centers currently serve 1 million statewide. 

The challenge for community health centers will be to sustain these new patients after the stimulus funds end in 2 years. (END OF POST.  Thank you for reading.)

Federal Stimulus Dollars Flow to Community Health Centers

Federal stimulus dollars have been directed by Congress to community health centers. Health Centers are economic engines that provide hundreds of thousands of health care jobs nation wide as well as stimulus to the economy through purchasing of supplies and equipment.

The American Investment and Recovery Act of 2009 includes (read more):


$2 billion for community health centers. There are over 1,000 community health centers nation wide with over 7,000 service sites. For example, Erie Family Health Center is 1 community health center with 8 service locations.

Included in the $2 billion mentioned above:

$340 million has just been announced for health centers to immediately increase the number of uninsured patients served by hiring more health care workers, increasing hours of operation, and increasing existing health center services. Applications are due on March 16th to compete for these funds.

$155 million has been already awarded to community health centers who applied to launch new sites last year and were not funded. In Illinois, the following community health centers just received $1.3 million each to add a new service site: Lawndale Christian Health Center (Chicago), Lake County Health Department/Community Health Center, Community Health and Emergency Services (Carbondale), and Friend Family Health Center (Chicago, and affiliate of the University of Chicago).

$1.5 billion for construction, renovation, equipment and health information technology systems at the community health center level. We do not yet know how community health centers will be able to compete for these funds. Buildings such as Erie Family Health Center's, Humboldt Park location  (Chicago, pictured above) are in need of state of the art upgrades.

Community health centers are cost effective providers of primary health care. Health centers provide primary care for 17 million individuals in the US, over 1 million in Illinois and over 500,000 in the Chicago metro area. Currently at least 45.7 million Americans are uninsured. This does not count the underinsured and those who are not residents of the US but who are workers and their family members who need health care.