Bullhook, Sweet health centers receive federal grants

Havre Daily News staff

Local community health centers are receiving some help making improvements in their health information technology.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced last week $864,468 in funding for 17 health centers in Montana — including more than $40,000 for each of the centers in Hill and Blaine counties — for health information technology enhancements.

“Health centers across the country are instrumental in providing high-quality, comprehensive primary health care to millions of people,” Burwell said in a press release. “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.”

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.

Locally, Sweet Medical Center in Chinook received $42,246 and Bullhook Community Health Center received $47,349.00

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., issued a release this week announcing the award, which the release said was “to provide improved continuity of care, mobile services to rural locations and increased access to affordable care.”

“Montana’s Community Health Centers provide reliable access to affordable health care close to home,” Daines said in the release. “I’m excited that there is more funding available to enhance the quality and reliability of care for Montanans.”

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., also issued a release this week announcing the grants.

"The future of rural health depends on the quality of our community health centers,”  Tester said. “These centers are the first and sometimes only source of care many rural families have access to, so supporting these centers is critical to keeping these communities healthy.”

After holding his inaugural Rural Health Summit in May, Tester’s release said, he worked to improve rural health services and support community health centers across the state. In June, he announced more than $1 million in funding for community health centers in Billings, Libby and Hardin. ACA Community Health Center Fund also awarded more than than $1 million to 17 Montana community health centers in August, including $84,046 to Bullhook and $19,893 to Sweet Medical Center.

The funding announced last week 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 of 2015, the Health and Human Services release said. 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, the release said.

Tester’s release said the senator has worked to strengthen the Affordable Care ACT, condemning partisan attacks on the program and introducing bills to help ease the program's financial burden on small businesses. He also voted for the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act  of 2015, which reauthorized the HRSA’s Health Center Cluster grant program, originally established by the ACT.

The funding announced last week 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, the Health and Human Services release said. 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. This is the first significant investment directly awarded to health centers since 2009 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,” Health Resources and Services Administration Acting Administrator Jim Macrae said in the release.

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, the Health and Human Services release said. Today, health centers employ nearly 190,000 people.