Community Health Center Receives $330,502 Grant

From Community Health Center, Inc.:

The Community Health Center, Inc., (CHC), received a $330,502 grant from the Human Resources & Services Administration Friday in recognition of its excellence in providing high quality care to patients and to continue its quality improvement work.

CHC, one of the nation’s leaders in healthcare quality improvement for the uninsured and underserved, received the largest of 15 grants totaling $1,829,929 that were awarded to community health centers in Connecticut for quality improvement work.

The grant to CHC is part of $100 million awarded to 1,304 health centers across the U.S. to invest in health center quality improvement, building upon their achievement in providing high quality comprehensive care. “These quality improvement awards will support health centers to continue to deliver superior health care that engages patients, improves care coordination and bridges overall access to care,” said Dr. Mary Wakefield, acting deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

CHC received the grant in recognition of:

• its high level of performance in the use of electronic health records to report clinical quality measure data
• its improvement in one or more clinical quality measures demonstrating a significant improvement to patient’s health
• receiving the best overall clinical outcomes among all health centers, and
• its patient centered medical home status for its service delivery site

“We are very proud and excited to receive this grant. At CHC, we believe every patient has a right to the highest quality healthcare,” said Daren Anderson, MD, vice president and chief quality officer of CHC. “Improving quality is an ongoing effort that requires support and participation from the entire healthcare team. Our quality outcomes reflect the hard work and dedication of our entire staff from every part of the organization,” he said.

Quality improvement has been a high priority for CHC since it was established in 1972, and it became even more central to the organization when CHC established the Weitzman Institute, its research and innovation center, in 2007. The institute conducts research in areas with direct implications for the day-to-day practice of primary care for medically underserved patients.

“We work hard to support our clinical team in delivering high-quality, evidence-based care to improve the health of our patients. I’m proud of this grant as an acknowledgement of our work and dedication and the vital difference it makes in the comprehensive care we provide to each patient we serve,” said Veena Channamsetty, MD, chief medical officer of CHC., who oversees the clinical care and clinical staff.

“We have always believed that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege,” says Mark Masselli, president, CEO and founder of CHC. “Early on, we understood that our mission was not just to provide healthcare, but to make sure that the care we provide is the best it can be. Our quality improvement efforts are designed to support that mission. I’m pleased that this grant not only recognizes the impressive work we have done, but also supports our continuing quality improvement work going forward.”

Image via Shutterstock