Sunday, May 18, 2025
5/18/2025
Fiscal Year 2025 Expanded Hours. - Community Health Center, Inc. (CHC) (H80CS00326) was founded in 1972 by local community activists in Middletown, Connecticut (CT) in a 2nd floor walkup apartment. Our commitment to communities, patients, and key populations has deepened and broadened over time as we embraced the challenges of providing and improving healthcare, building healthier communities, addressing the needs of special populations, and sharing our expertise through research, education, and training. CHC delivers core services (medical, dental, behavioral health care, substance use treatment) as well as chiropractic, registered dietician, and podiatry services with extensive enabling services to ameliorate health disparities through access to resources addressing social determinates of health. CHC clinical care teams achieve desired clinical and service outcomes through seamless collaboration and integration with CHC operations. In 2023, per our 2023 Health Center Program Uniform Data System (UDS) Data Report, CHC reached a new high mark of serving 107,000 unduplicated patients. Service delivery sites include comprehensive primary care centers, school-based health centers, and healthcare for unhoused people. Our target populations are low-income, underserved and uninsured individuals with an expanded focus on vulnerable and special populations including migrant/agricultural workers, immigrants/refugees, and the unhoused people. According to the 2025 CT State Health Assessment developed by the CT Department of Public Health, 23% of the CT population lives below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) with these residents at risk for the same poor health outcome associated with poverty due to CT’s high cost of living. In the pursuit of continuous improvement to meet the needs of both current and future patients, our next imperative is to expand service hours. CHC requests a total of $500,000/year to expand clinic hours. Our target population requires access to primary care outside traditional workweek (Monday-Friday), during evenings, and weekends, both Saturday and Sunday. In the absence of expanded hours, patients may forego primary care for themselves or their children. Barriers to access include rotating work shifts, weekend and night work hours, limited sick leave, and they may only have reliable transportation or childcare at certain hours. Expanded hours will increase CHC’s capacity to accept new patients, improve access to primary care, and reduce ER and urgent care utilization outside of the CHC patient-centered medical home. CHC will expand direct in-person service hours in the evening at three sites in Stamford, Bristol, and Clinton two evenings/week, from 5 to 7pm. Also, CHC will expand direct in-person clinical service hours on Sunday at two sites in Hartford and Meriden for three morning hours. We will make a major contribution to meeting the needs of its entire patient population by expanding clinically appropriate virtual telehealth care on Sundays for 3 hours per day which requires a licensed independent provider, a medical assistant, operational support from a patient service associate, a registered nurse, and a behavioral health clinician. CHC is resolute in our that by providing a true patient centered medical home for underserved populations will reduce health disparities and increase health equity. Funding will support our effort to alleviate barriers to high-quality primary care by expanding the health center operating hours to meet patient and community needs.
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).