Video | “CT BUZZ” welcomed Michael Taylor, CEO of the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center, and Dr. Michael Couturie, Chief Medical Officer of Medical and Dental Services, to highlight the organization’s mission of providing accessible healthcare to the Greater New Haven community and beyond.
Community health centers in Connecticut and nationwide are coming together to fight for funding.
With federal budget talks at an impasse, it could lead to lost funding for the centers, which fill gaps in the health care system. In Connecticut, the 17 community health centers in the state provide care for around 452,000 people, regardless of whether they are insured.
Community Health & Wellness Center — which operates clinics in Torrington, Winsted and North Canaan — and Wheeler Health — which serves patients in Bristol, Hartford, New Britain, Plainville and Waterbury — have signed a letter of intent to evaluate combining into one network.
Despite the challenges facing them on the federal level – such as changing policies and executive orders from the Trump administration – several of the state’s community health centers (CHCs) are being nationally recognized for the services they provide to hundreds of thousands of patients.
Community health centers (CHCs) are an essential source of health care for millions of U.S. women, building on a long history of providing care to under-resourced and higher-risk communities.
Scores of workers at clinics, nonprofits and state agencies help some of Connecticut’s most at-risk residents to stay not only sober, but also fed, safe, housed. But that work’s future has been spun off-kilter in recent months by massive federal budget cuts to programs that serve the poor.
Between 100,000 and 200,000 Connecticut residents could lose health insurance coverage from HUSKY Health, the state’s Medicaid program, over the coming years, severely impacting seniors, healthcare and eldercare facilities, particularly in rural communities.
A network of 17 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) in Connecticut, including three in the Northwest Corner towns of North Canaan, Winsted and Torrington, will receive a long-awaited funding boost in Medicaid reimbursement rates to the tune of $80 million over the next three years.
Community Health & Wellness Center’s North Canaan location recently was featured on WFSB’s Good Day CT.
If patients lose their insurance, Community Health Centers and other providers could be forced to make difficult decisions.
