Community health centers in the United States will require $10.5 billion in financing to strengthen health center infrastructure and enable health centers to serve 30 million people by 2015, says a new report released March 12 by the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC).
According to the report, Access Capital: New Opportunities for Meeting America’s Primary Care Infrastructure Needs, low-cost and streamlined financing to help health centers construct new facilities, renovate, as well as purchase health IT, will be critical to support expansion and capacity building efforts. Many health centers operate out of small and often donated old buildings not originally designed for healthcare delivery. About half of the health center sites have an average age of 36 years, and nearly all (94 percent) of surveyed health centers report that they must rebuild or renovate their facilities to either continue or expand care.
The 6,300 health center delivery sites that currently operate nationwide save the healthcare system up to $17.6 billion a year. By doubling the number of patients served as projected in the Access plan, health centers can generate savings as high as $40 billion in the next eight years, said the report. Download the report.
