Automatic cuts to take toll on community health centers

Mar 6 2013

Estimates suggest these centers will serve about 900,000 fewer patients in 2013 because of the sequester.

Modern Healthcare: Sequester Expected To Sock Health Centers
Community health centers will serve about 900,000 fewer patients in 2013 because of sequester-related funding cuts, according to a report. Researchers at the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University projected the service delivery impacts on the federally funded health centers from the sequester, which four days ago began cutting $85 billion in federal spending this year. Those 1,200 centers, which operate 8,500 locations, serve primarily low-income residents and will lose about $120 million in federal funds this year, according to the researchers. … Because the Obama administration has provided little detail on the implementation of the sequester, the researchers' report was an "initial assessment" of its impacts on the health centers. The scope of the patient impact was magnified by researchers' conclusion that the $120 million in grant funding losses will result in an additional loss of $230 million in third-party insurance funding (Daly, 3/4).

CQ HealthBeat: Report Projects Community Health Center Cutbacks Under Sequester
About 900,000 fewer patients could be served in community health centers due to cutbacks imposed by the sequester, according to a report issued on Monday by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. That's because the 1,200 federally funded community health centers and their satellite locations will lose about $120 million as a result of the automatic budget cuts ordered under the Budget Control Act (PL 112-125), said the report by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative (Norman, 3/4).

Other programs that will feel a strain from the sequster -

CNN Money: HIV 'Cure' At Risk From Budget Cuts
The automatic cuts in federal spending known as sequestration could take a bite out of crucial medical research, such as the recently unveiled study in which a toddler was cured of HIV. The National Institutes of Health, which co-funded the study, stands to lose $1.6 billion of its $31 billion budget through September as a result of the sequester, which went into effect on Friday. As the largest supporter of biomedical research in the United States, it could slash funding for hundreds of research programs, such as the HIV case. he NIH, in conjunction with the Foundation for AIDS Research, also known as amfAR, paid for the research of the child who was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (Smith, 3/5).