Community health center funding set to expire

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, took to the Senate floor this week in a bid to secure funding for community health centers across the country, including in the Flathead.

Tester warned that without action to extend funding for community health centers past a March 31 expiration date, numerous Montanans are at risk to lose crucial access to care.

“Fully 10 percent of the citizens of Montana depend on community health centers for access to their health care,” Tester said. “It is, in some cases, the only source of health care for these folks.”

Montana has 17 community health centers, which provide primary care as well as dental, mental health and addiction treatment services to over 100,000 people each year. These health centers are funded in part by the Community Health Center Fund, which was established by the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

The fund comprises 70 percent of federal dollars for clinics across the nation — one fifth of their total revenue, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But since September 2017, when a two-year extension expired, the health fund has been on thin ice. Congress extended the program through March 31 of this year, and Montana’s community health centers are preparing for cuts in services, layoffs, and according to Sen. Tester, potential closure.

One of the centers bracing for change is the Flathead Community Health Center in Kalispell, which serves over 8,000 residents of the Flathead Valley each year. The Flathead Community Health Center stands to lose $780,000 in funding — about 15 percent of its budget — if the community health fund isn’t renewed, said Executive Director Jody White. This would lead to tough decisions for the center as they evaluate areas to cut. “We have primary care, dental care, and mental and behavioral health services, so we would be forced to look at all of those and figure out which programs we would decrease,” she told the Daily Inter Lake.

White stressed that in the short term, the health center will be fine, thanks to contingency plans made when the Community Health Center Fund first expired last fall.

“We’ve been working on the plan since the long-term funding stopped being approved,” she said. “With the reserves, we’ll be able to maintain.” But if Congress doesn’t enact a long-term plan by July, she said, “we’ll have to make decisions about what changes need to be made.”

Even so, the Flathead Community Health Center is already feeling the effects of the funding’s uncertainty. The hazy future of community health funding has made it difficult to maintain staff, White said.

“At this point, we’re not filling vacant positions because we don’t want to lay somebody off,” she said.

Though Tester has been raising the alarm in Washington, White remains positive.

“Our mission is access to care for all citizens of the Flathead,” she said, “so we’re staying optimistic that (Congress) will find a solution.”

Reporter Adrian Horton can be reached at ahorton@dailyinterlake.com, or at 758-4439.