I was delighted to join Colorado Hospital Association CEO, Steven Summer, and other Colorado hospital leaders at the American Hospital Association Membership meeting in Washington D.C. in April. The trip gave me the chance to continue our discussion with Colorado’s Congressional Delegation about the need to support Colorado’s Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and Community-funded Safety Net Clinics (CSNCs). Due to some excellent communications work done by CRHC’s Policy Analyst, Terri Hurst, during her February trip to our nation’s capitol, I was able to get right to the point: Colorado’s RHCs and CSNCs need additional funding!

There is a lot of confusion in Congress, and elsewhere, about the providers who make up the healthcare safety net. Many of these providers are known as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and this type of provider has received a significant amount of financial support thanks to almost $40 million in total dollars from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), combined with funding from The Colorado Health Foundation. An additional $11 billion is expected for FQHCs through the recent health reform bill.

As I expressed to the Colorado delegation, the Colorado Rural Health Center is pleased that FQHCs have received funding. These facilities play a vital role in serving medically vulnerable populations in rural and urban Colorado. I am concerned, however, that other critical components of the healthcare safety net, the RHCs, CSNCs, and rural hospitals are not getting the funding necessary to meet their current and future needs.

CRHC represents 52 RHCs and, in partnership with the Hospital Association, 40 rural hospitals that take care of an increasingly aging rural population. While the aging of the rural population raises demand for services, demand is expected to grow even more due to the passage of federal health reform legislation and the newly enacted Colorado Hospital Provider Fee that expands the number of Coloradans eligible for Medicaid.

In addition, Community-Funded Safety Net Clinics (CSNCs) are clinics that don’t meet the federal requirements of being designated as RHCs or FQHCs. Together all of these types of healthcare providers make up the quilt that is our state’s safety net. I will not rest until the provider quilt is properly knit together to provide coverage and access to care for all Coloradans, and I thank Steven Summer and CHA for helping me take that message to our congressional delegation one more time.

Lou Ann Wilroy
CEO
Colorado Rural Health Center