Action Alert: Call Your State Assemblymember TODAY About Capital Funding for Community Based Providers

Dear Health Center Leaders,

Your help is urgently needed. The NYS Senate and Assembly are in the final stages of negotiating New York’s FY15-16 budget, and conversations are happening very quickly.  Please call your state legislators TODAY, Thursday, March 19, and ask that a minimum of 25% of the $1.4 billion—or $350 million—in capital funding allocated in this year’s Executive Budget be earmarked for community-based safety net providers statewide. 

Given the fast pace of the negotiations now taking place, it is extremely important  that you call your Assemblymembers before close of business today and relay the following information:

• Please speak with Assembly Leadership immediately about allocating a minimum of 25% of the $1.4 billion in capital dollars proposed in the Executive Budget to community-based safety net providers instead of investing all of these funds in hospital development and restructuring.
• The Executive Budget proposes no clear capital investment into community-based safety net providers, including FQHCs, and instead continues to focus on hospital-based care.
• Over the past four years, New York State’s healthcare agenda, including the DSRIP program, has focused on transforming the health care system by reducing unnecessary hospital use and improving access to community-based care.
• FQHCs are critical to these efforts to create high-performing primary care networks across New York.  

We also ask that you place a similar call to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie at 518-455-4800.

Click here and here to access additional details on the capital funding ask.

While we understand that this week is a busy one, we cannot afford to delay these calls! Please help us to ensure that New York demonstrates true commitment to healthcare delivery system transformation by asking your legislators to include adequate financial and capital funding for FQHCs – the very providers on whom the successful transformation relies – in this year’s budget.

Thank you,

Beverly Grossman
Senior Policy Director