Upstate health care centers funded to get uninsured into Obamacare

With delays piling up in the implementation of components of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has awarded $150 million to the nation’s health care centers as part of an outreach and enrollment program for patients on low incomes.

The grants will help centers provide advice on how the introduction of the Affordable Care Act will affect people’s current health cover as well as those who are currently uninsured.

New York state received $7.24 million of the fund with health centers located in the upstate region set to receive close to $1.3 million.

At many upstate health care centers the funding will go towards training staff members to educate the community and assist people in the enrollment process.

Upstate centers

Neighborhood Health Center in Buffalo has been preparing for over a year for the rollout of the ACA.

The organization serves poor and low income patients and has already invested half-a-million dollars in federal funds in waiting area and building improvements at their oldest facilities.

The additional $75,000 announced last week will enable the center to hire and train new staff members in the processes of the ACA, making the transition more manageable.

Executive Director Joanne Haefner says she anticipates one major outcome of the ACA is it’ll get more people to focus on prevention.

“More people might enter into primary care to get a preventative wellness visit, which is a great thing for the cost of healthcare. It costs way less for us to prevent something or help someone to see a healthcare risk then it does to wait until their ill or injured and need chronic disease care,”

Haefner says prevention would also help reduce hospital and emergency room wait times. 

In Rochester, Chuck Albanese, director of community services at the Unity Health System, agrees prevention will be a key benefit.

He says emergency rooms are overflowing because a lack of health insurance in underserved communities often translates to a lack of primary care.

“This will open up access to, obviously insurance, but also health care as well. A lot of folks that are underserved or homeless, they don’t access health care until it’s late stage and it’s an emergency room visit which could turn into a hospital admission,” Albanese says.

He says Unity plans to collaborate with two other Rochester centers that received funding to hold information sessions and assist at least 900 people directly in enrolling in the new insurance schemes.

He says there are bound to be bumps in the road, but he’s hopeful this funding will help health care centers throughout the upstate region reach a good portion of the community in coming months.

The HRSA estimates that almost 23% of the patients served by New York state’s health care centers are currently uninsured.   

Funding breakdown

Labeled as an Outreach and Enrollment Assistance the:

Speaking in Arizona last week, the Health and Human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius said “Investing in health centers means that people in neighborhoods and towns across the country have one more resource to help them understand their insurance options and enroll in affordable coverage.”

The funding formula has a $55,000 base, including one-time expenditures. The balance of the grant amount is calculated on the proportion of uninsured patients on the grantees' rolls according to the 2012 figures from the HRSA. Here is a summary of the upstate allocations.