The act that contains specifics about these grants is the Public Health Service Act under the title of Consolidated Health Center Program. This section establishes five different kinds of health center programs each of one with different requirements and conditions. Following is the list of the different grants defined by the Public Health Service Act:

Community Health Center Program

This program helps create and maintain community health centers all across the country. These grants for specific regions or areas that need private parties (non profit or profit) to complement ones that cannot deal with all the demand on that particular place or that need to supplement on specific fields of expertise or disciplines not provided by the current government health centers.

Migrant Health Center Program

This program is meant to provide assistance for funding health centers for migrants; from normal assistance to specific needs of those who migrate from abroad or interstate. There are many coordinated by migrant populations that group up to protect themselves and through these programs, the government contributes to fund those projects that have a significant importance.

Health Care For the Homeless Program

Those who are homeless experience significant more hazards and diseases and therefore need health care and use health services often. Since they are homeless, the lack of health insurance needs to be compensated with public or private non-profit medical assistance. Health Care who specialize in assisting the homeless can obtain funds through these health care for the homeless grants programs

Public Housing Primary Care Program

There are many public housing facilities out there to protect the homeless and provide them with a roof for different periods of time. These facilities need to provide primary care services too. Public housing primary care grants programs are meant to fund these facilities and provide them with the money needed to assist those making use of public housing. Only simple medicine practice and procedures are performed in these places but nevertheless, funding is always needed.

School-Based Health Center Program

Just like public housing, schools also need primary health services covered for accidents or common diseases that can affect students that are underprivileged, need immediate assistance or don’t have insurance coverage. For these situations, schools that need assistance to fund the necessary facilities and hire the staff to do the job, can obtain financing through school based health center grant programs.

Requirements For Approval

Only private, charitable, tax-exempt, non profit organizations or public entities are eligible for these government grants. However, there are also private institutions providing funds for these same purposes.
Therefore, there are funds available for almost anyone who is worried about providing health care for those who cannot afford private medical solutions.

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“Health centers at many public institutions used to get 100 percent of their funding from the state, but times are changing,” said Jennifer Lepus, director of university health services for the University of Maryland – Baltimore County.

The UM-BC student health center is one of hundreds nationally that have struggled with state budget cutbacks. Health centers at impacted schools may still receive some funding by offering student health insurance plans, but reimbursements from those plans – which are provided by a handful of companies that contract with colleges to offer exclusive group rated coverage to students – are typically not enough to support a health center budget.

“Our difficulty in offering only a group rated insurance program was that voluntary enrollment was not enough to sustain it,” said Western Kentucky University’s Health Services Director Libby Greaney. “So, WKU’s solution has been to accept commercial insurance plans, and file those claims.

WKU began billing insurance companies in 2001, after student health fees were cut the previous year.

“If your doctors are board-certified and credentialed, they can establish themselves as primary care physicians. This enables you to see community patients who are in-network with the plans that your health center accepts. If balanced properly, you can increase your service net and your revenue streams.”

According to Greaney, more and more schools are realizing the benefits of opening their health centers up to commercial plans, and taking a similar approach to WKU’s.

“People are beginning to see the need. They are talking about it and addressing it,” she said. “Those in college health who are resistant to the idea may be viewed as ‘old school’ if they do not embrace the concept.”

“More and more senior vice presidents at colleges are hearing about this approach, and are giving the directive to their health centers. I would encourage health center staff to be more in the driver’s seat.”

But Greaney also recognizes a natural conundrum. While accepting commercial carriers can open up additional revenue streams for college health centers, it may also impact access to care. The reality is that not every student enrolls in school with insurance coverage. Students without coverage either go without care, or must pay out of pocket for medical costs that are growing more expensive each year.

With the American College Health Association and some states calling for colleges and universities to provide health care coverage to all students, some schools are offering a menu of options.

For example, Lepus and her staff at UM-BC have opted to accept both a student health plan and plans from commercial carriers.

“If the goal is for every student to have coverage, we can achieve that by offering both options,” Lepus said. “The school plans are less expensive for people, but we have found that many young people today are covered by their parents’ insurance plans until they turn 23 years old. That means that a large number of students have coverage through private carriers, and it seems logical that when they come in to be seen, we can bill those insurance companies.”

The University of Utah at Salt Lake City is another example of a health center that has found that billing to commercial insurance carriers as well as offering a traditional student insurance plan through the university is a win-win for both students and the health center.

“By offering both options, we have a medium-sized pool of students who are required to come to us with their insurance, but we are also affordable and convenient for students with out of state insurance who will be paying out-of-network percentages or deductibles,” said Tiffany Smith, office manager/patient advocate for the University of Utah at Salt Lake City’s health center, which attracts about 7,000 students each year. “When we bill commercial insurance carriers, we make the process easier for our student patients, and this keeps them coming back to us in the future.”

And when they come back, it means additional revenue for the health center.

Although accepting commercial insurance carriers might seem overwhelming, Greaney offers a bit of advice to other health center directors who are considering it:

“Start small, and utilize the resources that are available to you,” she said. “Namely, people who have gone through this either in college health or out in the community.”

Jennifer McDuffee writes for Nuesoft Technologies, a provider of Medical Billing Software and Medical Practice Management Software. This article previously appeared in Nuesoft Xpress e-Nues.

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