Expanding Health Care Coverage

Project Title

North Country Adult Care

Grant Amount

$100,072

Priority Area

Expanding Health Care Coverage

Date Awarded

March 15, 2012

Region

North Country

Status

Closed

Website

http://www.childrens-clinic.org/

Successful implementation of Federal health reform will require expanded primary care access for the estimated 1.2 million New Yorkers who will gain health insurance coverage and for the 1.4 million who will likely remain uninsured.

Community health centers—ranging from a storefront free clinic to sophisticated operations running facilities across a multi-county region—are on the front lines of primary care. But many community health centers struggle with low margins, limited funding, and growing demand. When health reform is fully implemented, community health centers are expected to double capacity to serve 3 million New Yorkers.

NYHealth issued a Request for Proposals and awarded 10 grants to help community health centers in four medically underserved regions—Long Island, Western New York, Central New York, and the Finger Lakes—take practical steps to build capacity to better meet the growing need for primary care services.

North Country Children’s Clinic has served vulnerable children in New York’s North Country for more than 40 years, but it found that as its young patients aged out and became adults, there were no primary care providers willing to take publicly insured patients. At the same time, through a 2010 survey, the Clinic found that as many as 8,000 parents of their pediatric patients had no source of primary care. With this grant from NYHealth, the Clinic began to provide adult patients with primary, mental health, and dental care in one location, and expanded clinic hours to meet the needs of working poor adults. The Clinic expected to serve almost 5,000 new adult patients a year with this expansion.