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phone 202.331.4601 fax
202.296.3526
Darnell Dent, Chairman
Margaret A. Murray, Executive Director
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July 20, 2001
The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy Dear Senator Kennedy: We are writing on behalf of the Association of Health Center Affiliated Health Plans (AHCAHP) whose mission is to improve the health of medically underserved populations through the development, survival, promotion and growth of Community Health Center affiliated health plans. I would like to urge you to support the permanent authorization and funding of the Healthy Communities Access Program (HCAP) as part of the “Health Care Safety Net Amendments of 2001.” Under the current Community Access Program (CAP), over 76 communities have grants that are designed to increase access to health care for the uninsured by eliminating fragmented service delivery, improving efficiencies among safety net providers, and by encouraging greater private sector involvement. Several of the AHCAHP plans have received CAP grants. Two of the AHCAHP plans in particular have been instrumental in encouraging their communities to address the difficulties of access to care and disparities of care for vulnerable populations through the CAP program. CareOregon in Portland, OR has spearheaded Oregon’s plan to create the first statewide information network in the nation run and initiated by and for the state’s safety net clinics. The project will offer practice management software to allow the community health clinics to achieve greater efficiency in scheduling, resource utilization and financial functions. The information systems will then be used to more accurately and more quickly identify health related patterns among both the insured and uninsured so that public policy decisions can be made to address their needs. Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island is an integral partner in Rhode Island’s CAP grant along with the Rhode Island Community Health Centers and other providers of care. Their goal is to improve care coordination, insurance coverage and health outcomes to the 97,000 uninsured people in the state. To accomplish this, their CAP grant will be used to develop a comprehensive profile of the Rhode Island delivery system for the uninsured, to identify and develop a network of specialty providers willing to accept the uninsured, and to develop a data warehouse to analyze practice centric and patient centric data. Currently, there is no federal support other than this demonstration program for communities wishing to integrate the programs and services they already provide into a cohesive system of care for uninsured patients. Federal programs such as Medicaid waivers, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), Community Health Centers, and Disproportionate Share Hospital funding provide critical direct health care services to the uninsured, but none of them focus on integration of services across all providers. These proven mechanisms for improving access to care for the uninsured need the support of better integration through the Healthy Communities Access Program to improve their effectiveness. We urge you to support legislation to authorize and continue funding the Healthy Communities Access Program in order to preserve its benefits to communities across the nation. Programs such as the Healthy Communities Access Program are critical if safety net providers are to continue to meet the health care needs of the communities we serve. We also support the National Association of Community Health Center’s position that Community Health Centers should be given a preference as applicants for HCAP grants due to their historic and ongoing role as safety net providers and that they should be given a clear role in each local HCAP consortium’s decision-making body. We look forward to speaking with you about these issues and working with you to develop legislative solutions to the problems of our nation’s poor and uninsured.
Sincerely,
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