Good news! Secretary Sebelius announced today that $150 million in new funding will be made available to community health centers to help uninsured individuals connect to expanded coverage options under the ACA. The secretary’s press release noted that “with these new funds, community health centers will be able to hire new staff, train existing staff, and conduct community outreach events and other educational activities.”
While this funding is proportionally allocated across federally-qualified health centers (FQHCs) in all states, it is particularly welcomed in the states with a pure (not consumer partnership) federally-facilitated marketplace (FFM) where exchange establishment grants are not available for in-person assisters to supplement limited navigator funding. For example, in my home state of New Hampshire, over $769,000 is available to FQHCs for consumer assistance, effectively supplementing the state’s $600,000 navigator allocation by 128 percent. This new award offers a minimum funding level of $55,000 (which includes $5,000 for one-time expenditures) and final award amounts may be adjusted (upward we presume) depending on the number of approvable applications.
There is an application process. Applicants must complete an electronic application that describes how the center will use the funding to meet the need for consumer assistance in their service area; and how it will coordinate activities with other health centers and other outreach and assistance efforts. The application must indicate how many additional outreach and enrollment assistance FTEs the center will hire (they are required to hire at least one FTE) and how many of the health center outreach and enrollment assisters are expected to successfully complete all required federal and/or state training. Additionally applicants must estimate the number of individuals who will receive assistance and be successfully enrolled. Applications are due May 31st and awards are expected in July.
Having administered New Hampshire’s Medicaid and CHIP application assistance program for many years, I know first hand that most health centers do an awesome job in helping their patients connect to coverage and many actively conduct outreach in their communities. But I was particularly pleased to see that centers can’t just “play catch,” that is they must conduct outreach to individuals in their service area who are not current health center patients, as well as help their currently uninsured patients. Interestingly, the requirements for these additional assisters parallel those required of navigators in terms of demonstrated expertise and required duties. The training is also expected to be similar to that of navigators.
Thanks to HHS for finding additional funding to help ensure that consumers get the assistance they need to connect to coverage. We hope the agency will continue to identify additional opportunities (as I wrote about in this blog) to strengthen and support the navigator and assisters, particularly in FFM states.
