Public Health and Private Financing a Winning Pair

Writing in the November issue of Health Affairs, Ronda Kotelchuck and colleagues urge health planners to push for collaboration between the nation's community health centers and community development financial institutions. That would make it easier to take advantage of financing tools like the New Markets Tax Credit program, established by Congress in 2000, to get money for primary care, she wrote.

In making her case, Ms. Kotelchuck draws on her experience at New York's Primary Care Development Corp. Founded in 1993, New York's PCDC serves 730,000 patients and has been involved in $390 million worth of health-related projects, mostly health centers. In doing that, it used both public and private monies. Health centers in other states could do the same, Ms. Kotelchuck said.

“As budgets shrink and states grapple with health care challenges, both sectors have an interest in ensuring that tools and financial resources exist to preserve and expand programs that promote health and development for low-income communities,” she wrote.

Now in their fifth decade in the U.S., community health centers are a fixture in more than 8,000 cities and towns across the nation. They serve more than 23 million patients, most of them poor. The article is available here.