WASHINGTON – Expanding health centers to reach an additional 20 million patients as part of national health reform would save $212 billion from 2010 to 2019, including federal Medicaid savings of $59 billion, according to a new study.
The dollar value of these expected savings far exceeds the cost of the health center investment of $38.8 billion called for in the July 14 version of the House health reform bill.
The findings are contained in "Using Primary Care to Bend the Curve: Estimating the Impact of a Health Center Expansion on Health Care Costs," conducted by faculty and staff at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services and funded through the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative.
This research brief, the third in a series examining the link between national health reform proposals and community health centers, estimates the cost savings that would be realized by making important investments in non-profit health centers as an element of national health reform.
The brief makes several key findings:
- Health centers currently serve 19 million patients, which will generate health system savings of $24 billion this year because of the lower overall medical expenditures associated with health center patients.
- Coupling insurance reforms with a 20-million patient increase in health center capacity over the next 10 years would generate an additional $35.6 billion in savings in the year 2019. Over this period, cumulative health system savings would reach an estimated $212 billion.
- Were payments to health centers by health insurers operating in a health insurance exchange to be set at Medicaid's prospective payment rate, the number of new patients served would rise from 20 million to 22 million, with more than 41 million patients served. This additional change would raise the 10-year cumulative health care savings to $251 billion.
- At 20 million additional patients served, Medicaid savings would reach $59 billion over the 10-year time frame. Were the number of additional patients served by health centers to rise to 22 million, federal Medicaid savings would exceed $70 billion.
"These estimates underscore the importance of simultaneous investments in both health insurance reform and health center expansion funding to create sustainable primary care for medically underserved communities," said Sara Rosenbaum, chairperson of the Department of Health Policy at GW.
"The direct federal investment in health centers needs to go hand-in-hand with insurance expansion for low income patients," said Julio Bellber, president and CEO of the RCHN Community Health Foundation. "Together they can create an economic engine that will allow us to extend the high quality, primary healthcare home model to all communities."
The savings projected uby the study reinforce the premise that health insurance coverage expansions, coupled with investments in the nation's primary healthcare infrastructure, can spur high quality and sustainable primary healthcare in medically underserved rural, urban and suburban communities while simultaneously bending the healthcare cost curve.
