North Bay clinics get $2.1 million in federal stimulus

NORTH BAY – Community health centers across the North Bay have received about $2.1 million in the first round of federal stimulus dollars.

The funding will be used to create more than 30 new positions and expand capacity by at least 3,500 patients.

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed Feb. 17, lawmakers approved the largest single investment in the federally qualified health centers program since it was created 45 years ago, carving out about $2 billion specifically for the safety net providers.

It was unclear at the outset exactly how the money would be disseminated, but officials have now learned it will be passed down in several rounds.

The first non-competitive grants were announced March 31 and determined by the amount and type of patients served at each clinic, with those serving the highest number of uninsured garnering the most funding. The dollars will be drawn on a monthly basis for most during a two-year period and will be used primarily to add staff.

Napa-based Clinic Ole won the largest grant of centers in Sonoma, Napa and Marin counties, and will receive about $407,000. Clinic Ole Executive Director Beatrice Bostick said the organization will use the funds to hire two pediatricians and several support staff. “The large pediatric office in Napa no longer accepts children on Medi-Cal, so it is absolutely critical that we add these doctors,” she said.

Second to the Napa clinic, Santa Rosa-based Southwest Community Health Center was approved for about $345,000, which will be used to hire a pediatrician, a family practice doctor and a case manager, as well as nine support staff. The clinic is still looking for people to fill some of the positions, but one doctor will begin work next month.

“About 35 percent of our patients are children under the age of 12, so it is a huge population for us,” said Southwest Chief Executive Officer Naomi Fuchs.

In total, the nonprofit is seeing about 100 new patients a week.

Other recent grant winners include about $237,000 for Alliance Medical Center in Healdsburg and Windsor, $179,000 for West Marin’s Coastal Health Alliance, $291,000 for Marin Community Clinics, $277,000 for Petaluma Health Center, $209,000 for West County Health Centers and $189,000 for Sonoma Valley Community Health Center.

The next rounds of funding are expected this summer, one on a competitive-basis and another that will be handed out in a similar fashion as the first installment.

The feds are still in the process of defining the criteria for the competitive dollars, but initial estimates show eligible applicants could receive as much as $1 million per project. The funding would be used for major “shovel-ready” construction.

A final set of funding is also expected for all providers of Medi-Cal and Medicare and will be prioritized for launching new electronic health records systems and maintaining existing ones. State analysts project the funding, which will not likely go out until next year, could be as much as $24,000 per provider per new project and $8,000 per provider for maintenance.

Despite optimism for the federal help, clinic leaders said that while they receive money in one hand, the state is taking more from the other. “We are kind of caught in a Catch 22 with the funding. We have these opportunities to expand the clinics on one side, but state cuts will still be hard to overcome,” said West County Health Centers Executive Director Mary Szecsey.

Earlier this month, the state announced that it will no longer fund “optional benefits” for Medi-Cal, which includes adult dental and mental health services among others. The cuts were written in a trailer bill to the budget saying the reductions would be triggered if the state could not receive at least $10 billion in direct budgetary relief from the stimulus bill. For some local clinics this will mean a loss of more than half a million dollars in revenue annually, with a total loss of more than $15 million across all North Bay counties.

“I imagine we will be able to use some of the new funding for dental, but it won’t be enough to sustain the program forever,” Ms. Szecsey said.

The cuts will go into effect July 1. The California Primary Care Association, the advocacy group for the state’s health centers, is negotiating with state leaders to try and have federally qualified clinics exempted from the dental cuts.