Greater Lawrence Family Health Center’s Winthrop Avenue, Lawrence, location. (Courtesy photograph.)
Greater Lawrence Family Health Center (GLFHC), which provides primary care in Lawrence and Methuen, is receiving nearly $93,000 in federal grants to build on its “high levels of performance” in quality improvement and high quality comprehensive care.
The grants were announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). At GLFHC, some of the money will be used to measure and improve quality, said Richard Napolitano Jr., GLFHC’s senior vice president, external relations/chief development officer.
“We’re talking about the integration of data from different parts of the health center—the clinical data, financial systems, any other data systems that we can put together into a data warehouse,” he said. The non-profit health center launched the program last year with money from the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Napolitano explained the ultimate goal. “And, at the end, the hope is that that’s going to help us in terms of our service delivery to our patients.”
“These funds that we received from HRSA (Health Resources and Services Administration) are going to help us continue the much-needed training on the new business intelligence products that we are putting into place.”
Besides GLFHC, 38 other Massachusetts health centers will share more than $3 million to invest in health center quality improvement efforts, and to provide high quality comprehensive care.
“Millions of Americans rely on health centers to provide them with quality health care,” said Dr. Mary Wakefield, HHS Acting Deputy Secretary. “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.”
Federal money comes from the Affordable Care Act’s (Obamacare’s) Community Health Center Fund, which was extended last year with bipartisan support.
“Health centers are evaluated on a set of performance measures emphasizing health outcomes and the value of care delivered,” said HRSA Acting Administrator Jim Macrae. “These measures provide a balanced, comprehensive look at services to manage conditions among the vulnerable populations served by health centers.”