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Ten percent of Jordan Valley Community Health Center’s annual budget is restored through federal legislation.
Photo courtesy Jordan Valley Community Health Center
Ten percent of Jordan Valley Community Health Center’s annual budget is restored through federal legislation.

Expired federal funds returning to Jordan Valley Community Health

Posted online

Last edited 2:09 p.m., Feb. 12, 2018

About $4 million of Jordan Valley Community Health Center’s funding was restored at the federal level.

By a 71-28 vote, the U.S. Senate included the funding in a short-term spending bill meant to avoid a government shutdown, according to media reports. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, announced Feb. 8 that legislation he co-sponsored got the green light as part of the budget deal, meaning the Community Health Center Fund was reauthorized for two years with a $600 million funding increase, according to a news release.

The CHCF expired Sept. 30, 2017, and Blunt and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, led a bipartisan group of 65 colleagues calling on the Senate to restore the funding.

“More than half a million Missourians, many of whom are uninsured or on Medicaid, rely on community health centers for quality, affordable health care,” Blunt said in the release. “This two-year funding extension, which includes a $600 million increase, will provide community health centers the certainty they need to plan for the future and give families peace of mind that they’ll have access to care.”

Jordan Valley Community Health Center CEO Brooks Miller this week is visiting Washington, D.C., in support of the CHCF restoration.

“We are ecstatic that the fund was passed,” Miller said. “We would’ve liked to have seen it be more than two years, but with our current economy, we are very fortunate.”

Miller said the CHFC provides 10 percent of the Springfield-based health care clinic’s annual budget of $40 million.

“For us, that fund is the core of our organization as a federal health care center,” Miller said, noting Jordan Valley operates nine centers. “Health centers are fortunate to have Blunt as an advocate.”

According to the release from Blunt’s office, the Senate’s failure to restore the CHCF would have resulted in community health centers losing up to 70 percent of their funding, as well as an estimated 2,800 site closures, 50,000 job losses and approximately 9 million Americans losing access to health care.

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