Wednesday, April 30, 2025
4/30/2025
Fiscal Year 2025 Expanded Hours. - Project Title: Expanded Hours Applicant Name: Sun River Health, Inc. Address: 1037 Main Street, Peekskill, NY 10566-2913 Project Director Name: Anne K. Nolon, MPH, Chief Executive Officer Phone Numbers: Voice: 914-734-8747 / Fax: 914-734-8614 E-Mail address: anolon@sunriver.org Website: www.sunriver.org Health Center Program Grant Number: H80CS00313 Funding Amount Requested: $500,000 - Needs to be addressed: Despite experiencing an increased burden of chronic disease, many of the low-income and underserved populations targeted by Sun River Health (“SRH”) lack access to affordable primary medical care services. Aside from the comprehensive primary medical care services offered by SRH, the target population in the Health Center’s service area typically struggle to access health care providers who accept Medicaid and/ or offer sliding fee discount schedules for low-income uninsured patients and even fewer who offer bilingual services for those with limited English proficiency. While SRH provides quality and affordable, culturally and linguistically competent primary medical care services, the Health Center has struggled with a high vacancy rate and substantial provider and support staff recruitment challenges due to the current health care labor market. This has limited SRH’s capacity to meet the considerable demand for quality primary care services in several service site communities. Indeed, the need for additional primary care service hours, including early morning and evening hours, has been reinforced through the direct feedback of current SRH patients and community partners. - Proposed services: SRH is proposing to use Expanded Hours (EH) funding to support an enhanced provider and support staff recruitment strategy to address current workforce barriers and add the Health Center staffing capacity to expand hours of operation at several federally qualified health center (FQHC) sites. To this end, SRH will add internal recruitment staff and external recruitment support to supplement the Health Center’s existing recruitment team which is currently functioning at capacity. This additional support will enable SRH to expand primary care staffing capacity as needed to add a cumulative 43 operating hours for general primary medical care access across five (5) FQHC sites – the White Plains, New Rochelle, Copiague, Brentwood, and Coram (Elsie Owens) Health Centers. SRH will also add call center staffing capacity to accommodate the additional demand associated with the expanded hours. - How expanded hours will meet community need: SRH is proposing to expand its Health Center operating hours by 43 hours per week across five (5) FQHCs where workforce challenges have been particularly impactful in limiting the weekly hours of operation. Expanding SRH’s FQHC hours of operation will provide additional primary medical care capacity in communities with substantial primary care gaps and provider shortages and will provide increased flexibility for appointment scheduling to improve access to care for those patients with inflexible work schedules, family commitments, behavioral health complexities, and other constraints that often serve as barriers to care. In addition to expanding access to existing Health Center patients, the EH project will provide the capacity to add 1,200 new patients by December 2025. - Population groups to be served: The project will target the patients currently served by SRH as well as other members of the target population. Accordingly, the target population will comprise low-income individuals & families in five (5) communities located in New York’s Hudson Valley and Long Island regions, with substantial representation from racial and ethnic minority communities, predominantly those who are African American and Hispanic/Latino. The Health Center also serves particularly vulnerable and complex populations including individuals with mental illness and/ or substance use disorder.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).