National Health Center Week 2016
Celebrating America's Health Centers: Innovators in Community Health
August 7-13, 2016
Public Housing Health Centers Day (August 9th)
Health Care for the Homeless Day (August 10th)
Farmworker Health Day (August 11th)
As local community owned and operated businesses, Health Centers serve over 24 million Americans at more than 9,000 delivery sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. territories. One in every fifteen people living in the United States depends on their services. Health Centers deliver high quality, cost effective, accessible care while serving as critical economic engines helping to power local economies.
Today, community health centers have compiled a significant record of success that includes:
- Producing $24 billion in annual health system savings
- Reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and unnecessary visits to the emergency room
- Treating patients for a fraction of the average cost of one emergency room visit
- Maintaining patient satisfaction levels of nearly 100 percent
- Generating $26.5 billion in economic activity and over 230,000 jobs
- Reducing infant mortality rates
Health centers not only prevent illness and foster wellness in the most challenging populations, they produce innovative solutions to the most pressing healthcare issues in their communities. They reach beyond the walls of conventional medicine to address the factors that may cause sickness, such as lack of nutrition, mental illness, homelessness and addiction. Because of their long record of success in innovation, managing healthcare costs, and reducing chronic disease, leaders in Congress have declared health centers a model of care that offers a “bipartisan solution to the primary care access problems” facing our nation.
