Speaker: Good afternoon, this is Matt Heinz, Director of Provider Outreach at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and I'm happy to welcome all of you to our National Health Center Week 2014 call. I'm pleased to be joined by Secretary Burwell as well as Dr. Wakefield from HRSA and a variety of other staff members here at HHS and also of course Tom Van Coverden from the National Association of Community Health Centers. Without them, this call will not be possible so we thank them for their help with us. And I would like to actually turn things over very quickly here to Secretary Burwell for some opening remarks.
Speaker: Thanks. Hi everyone and happy national health center week. I can tell you that since I've started here at the Department of Health and Human Services here in June, there's a constant refrain that I keep hearing and that is just how important community health centers are to the goals that we share for delivering impact and providing Americans with the opportunity to access building blocks for healthy and productive lives. And one of my first stops as secretary was to those at the health center down in Atlanta, the Oakhurst Medical Center just outside of Atlanta and it was a great visit. It was a great visit where I had a chance to see some of the work that I know you all do every day. And you're impact at the health centers as this leaders of this health centers just really quite breathtaking when you know I've come to, no one understand that 1 in 15 people in our country receive primary and preventive care at the local health center and that's 22 million people. And if you add up the populations of New York State and West Virginia, my home state although I have lived in New York as well, you wouldn't even reach 22 million in terms of what you all are serving every year and so it's an incredible, incredible number. It represents a lot of impact deliver to a lot of families every day in terms of the services that you provide. Often in areas where those services wouldn't be available and often you provide them regardless of whether a patient is able to pay. So it's my sincere hope that, as we work together, we will be able to make every week, health center week in terms of what it means to the American people. And I wanted to also take this opportunity to say thank you very much for everything you were doing to get to your patients covered. You are all, are all the anchors of both access and quality on an everyday basis and particularly those of your patients whom you help sign up for Medicaid CHIP and the marketplace to health insurance program. So thank you and you're a very very big reason for, that after 4 years after the affordable care act came in to being, we're able to say and there's evidence that the health care law is working to help families, seniors, business people and tax payers too in terms of affordability issues. And it's making health care more affordable, more accessible and improving the quality and I know you all work on all three of those every single day. And since the start of open enrollment in 2014, you are all have trained more than 16,000 membersthroughout more than 6 million people learn about their options for getting covered. In fact, a recent Kaiser study found that you made up more than a quarter of all assist or efforts nationwide. And so you all as an anchor of the change with the nation you're seeing is just something I want to make sure, you all are clear, how appreciative we are for the teamwork and help and support. And as I say thank you, I'm going to say I'm here to ask for your help with open enrollment in 2015. I'm sure you can imagine, since I've been here at HHS, I mean every single day on the issues of quality, affordability, and access and so I've been focused on it and I'll hope, hope you all will too in terms of the 2015 enrollment. And we want to make marketplace coverage, extend that differences making the people already and when I help keep those people that are covered covered. And I want to reach those of our neighbors who are eligible for coverage but don't yet have it. And so hope you'll be a part of that as well. And also want to, just raise something because I know probably or maybe a little down in the list but I want to make sure you all know about it and that is, we want to make sure that those who have outstanding documents with regard to citizenship and immigration, get their documents in by September the 5th. You probably have read out a little bit or may have seen a little bit about that in the paper but always good to make sure you all know what's going on with that kind of thing and we know that some of this folks may actually be your patients and many of your teams have already been doing a great job of helping us and helping those patients make sure that they get their outstanding information to us. In May, we had about 970,000 people with citizenship or immigration data matching errors but today, there are about 310,000 consumers who haven't submitted the data in terms of outstanding citizenship or immigration documents and we've made a lot of request, we've used e-mail, we've used phone, we used a lot of different tools but we want to make sure we do everything we can so if we can get that information before September 5th, they can stay covered in the marketplace. And we've already reached out to folks 5 to 7 times and yesterday we started sending out the letters so that they would know that they still have outstanding documents and we hope you'll work with your patients and your neighbors who received this notices and remind them how important it is to get this documents in. And if they received the notice, they can log in to healthcare.gov their account and upload the documents or mail them to the address on the letter, there's a clear address on the letter. And if they need any additional help, the call center is available, 1-800-318-2596 and for people hard of hearing the TTY line is 1-855-889-4325. So, sorry about that little interlude on something specific about thought since we're all together, I'd do that. At the end of the day, we all share the same goal and that's to help Americans obtain and maintain the security and peace of mind that quality health care coverage at a price that they can afford. And you and your team are doing such important work to help your patients and their neighbors obtain coverage and receive quality care. And there are just so many reasons that you are game changers for millions of Americans every day. So just want again say thank you for the impact you deliver and I look forward to working with you and hopefully visiting a number of you in days, weeks, and months and years. It's my honor. Now, I will turn this over to one of our great leaders in our department and one of our great leaders in American health care, Doctor Mary Wakefield.
Speaker: Thank you so much Secretary Burwell and special thanks to you for your terrific support of community health centers across the country and for taking time to participate on the call. As I think all of those of you who are on the phone can tell from the secretary's remarks, she has a very deep appreciation for the work that all of you do on behalf of the populations that you served. And this are the populations that we at HRSA of course care deeply about too. I'm really pleased to join you today as we recognize and highlight the critical role that health centers play, in ensuring access to high quality affordable health care services for as the secretary indicated, about 22 million people in communities all across the country. And that is a number that has been climbing from just 17 million at the start of this administration and that 22 million is a number that reflects individuals and families all across the nation who are just better off because of your commitment and because of your leadership. Your ability to impact so many lives is doing, no small part to the fact that you stood up, new service delivery sites. Really working to extend the reach of health center infrastructure so that now our new milestone for the number of service delivery sites has over the past 5 years increase from where we started about 7,500 to today, about 9,200 new service delivery sites. And yeah, even as you've established the new sites added to the old ones, you've also been taking on new responsibilities. So for this reason and in particular because of your most recent work, like Secretary Burwell, I too want to thank you for all that you've done and that you continue to do to connect your patients and members of your communities with affordable insurance options under the Affordable Care Act. Your efforts are behind the mounting evidence of the expansion of health insurance coverage, sparked by the Affordable Care Act is already significantly reducing uninsured rates in America. For example, a fairly new study in the New England journal of medicine found that the uninsured rate for Americans, age 18 to 64 fell. It fell from 21% in September of just last year to 16.3% in April of this year. That drop in a number of uninsured across the nation matters. I would just say that having but a nurse practicing in hospitals earlier in my career, too often I personally saw people seeking care, too late to prevent serious complications from diseases that for lack of insurance coverage went undiagnosed and went untreated. Just like all of you on the call, I watched over the years of my career in health care a seemingly unabating rise in a rate of uninsured individuals. All of us watched those numbers turning upward until now. When we see a significant change in that trim line, associated with the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. That trim line is bending and no small parts because of the work that you do and the work that you've done. In other words as a secretary indicated, health centers really can claim responsibility for a sizable part of the success that the Affordable Care Act has already achieved. As Secretary Burwell mentioned, you help over 6 million individuals learn about the market place or enrolling coverage and until you all work, until you engaged this very important effort, many of those individuals were folks who weren't able to access even preventive services. They can help to stay off serious illnesses. But today, because of the Affordable Care Act and because of you, people are now able to get health insurance coverage and as the result, get checkups and screenings at no added out of pocket cost to them. Eliminating that cost barrier to getting preventive services which the Affordable Care Act has now done for 76 million American. We'll eliminating that cost barrier as another example of how the law and more than 16,000 assisters trained by health centers have help people in the coverage. And are collectively, between the law and those assisters and the health centers where they work are collectively paving away for better health outcomes. So through access to health centers and through access to health insurance for example, this past year at health centers nationwide, nearly 238,000 young kids, young children were immunized. And more than 3.4 million women was screened for cervical cancer. Both of this services really important but now available without co-pays under the Affordable Care Act. And by the way that increase in cervical cancer screening is an increase of nearly a half a million women being screened since 2009, what an achievement. For young children, this services can help prevent outbreaks of highly contagious diseases like pertussis and for women with early signs of a cancer that insurance screenings can now make available. Well, we can get them to good health outcomes. In addition, health centers provided prenatal care to nearly half a million mothers and you, the health centers cared for more than one million adults and children with asthma. And you've help nearly two million patients better control their diabetes and over the last period you've also help more than 3.5 million patients better control their hypertension. So this are incredible numbers that all of you can take great pride in achieving. And another impressive aspect of health center performance is that you increase the number and the types of services that you've been providing to patients while simultaneously improving quality. So health centers work isn't just about quantity, in fact your clinical measures in many areas are exceeding national averages. For example we know that 91% of your patient were screened for tobacco use last year. Do you know what that compares to? Well it vastly exceeds the national average of just 62.4%, think of that achievement. Further, as of last month, just as of July, 54% of health centers had at least one site recognized as a patient center of medical home. Really putting up firmly on track, frankly to really and greatly exceed the 40% target recognition rates for health centers that we had set for the end of this fiscal year. In addition to your own internal monitoring of health center performance, we also see fairly viewed literature and major reports continued to document that health centers successfully increase access to care but health centers promote quality and cost effective care and that health centers improve patient outcomes as specially for traditionally underserved population. So this is all by way of saying congratulations on a job well done. This are significant achievements that we can build on. Even as very important work still lies ahead. Obviously looking forward and most importantly, we need to continue to educate the uninsured about their options under the Affordable Care Act. You heard the call the action from Secretary Burwell because of our next open enrollment period that is fast approaching. And though, we also need to recognize that too often, people who now have health insurance, many for the first time, may not be aware of the range of affordable care act benefits that are available. Many of the millions of newly insured may need guidance on the benefits that health insurance provides them. And you know I certainly heard about that from some health centers staff that I met in rural Arkansas just a week or so ago. That is the need to educate people about what having health insurance actually means. To help with this, our colleagues of CMS have created a new website and I've strongly encourage you, if you haven't already to take a minute and go to that website. It's called From Coverage to Care and it's designed to help health care providers explain to patients what health insurance coverage can do for them. It shares information like how to find the right provider and why it's so important to partner with a steady source of care. Why that, for example is important for good health. So you can get on that website, From Coverage to Care at this address, marketplace.cms.gov. That resource will help provide the right information for your patients about health insurance coverage and help to your patients achieve even better health outcome both for themselves but also for their families. And as you wondered, I called the secretary's request for your health as we reconcile data that were or submitted by consumers in federally facilitated market places. This is a very important effort and a very important way to help make sure that those individuals that still need to submit information don't lose health insurance coverage. Jim Macrae's team at the Bureau of Primary Health Care is accessible to all of you to help you as you work with patients and members of your communities to submit that necessary documentation. And frankly as we are on the this call right now, his team is sending out more specific information to all of you about how you can help. So I'm closing, let me just leave you with this thought. I think that from, just... few years from now, when the history is written of how the United State open its doors to health care services in this country for more of its citizens and how we... here in the United States did the incredibly hard work of building a health care system that was accessible and affordable to everyone regardless of their zip code or regardless of the balance in their bank account or regardless of the status of their health. I think that when generations from now look back at what needed to be accomplished and then what was accomplished. It is clear that your work will be recognized as having been absolutely central to this achievements. And this achievements are grounded in your collective dedication to mission and your dedication to the people that you serve. In this incredibly important window of time in the health of the nation, a time when of course there's still important work to be done, let me just say that at HRSA, we greatly appreciate your leadership and we feel very privileged to be partners with you. Thanks so much. Matt.