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PASCO -- Community Health Center La Clinica officials plan to use a $7.4 million federal stimulus grant to expand the Pasco clinic with a new 30,000-square-foot, three-story building.
President Obama announced Wednesday that the federal Health Resources and Services Administration will distribute $508.5 million in Facility Investment Program grants to support construction and renovation projects at federally qualified community health centers nationwide.
Another $88 million will be available to health centers to pay for management, financial, technology and clinical support services.
La Clinica is the only community health center in Washington to receive a grant.
La Clinica CEO Carl Walters said the money will be used to construct a new building next to the existing clinic on Court Street to expand its behavioral health and dental services, as well as its Women, Infants and Children Program and community outreach.
The building also will house a modernized call center for scheduling patient appointments, he said.
Construction is expected to start sometime in the third quarter of 2010.
"We are extremely excited about this," Walters said. "We have wanted to do this for some time now."
Obama said Wednesday that community health centers play an important role in the nation's health care.
"For you folks, health care isn't just about diagnosing patients and treating illness -- it's about caring for people and promoting wellness," Obama said.
"It's about emphasizing education and prevention, and helping people lead healthier lives so they don't get sick in the first place. And it works," he said. "Studies show that people living near a health center are less likely to go to the emergency room and have unmet critical medical needs. CHCs are proven to reduce ethnic and racial disparities in care. And the medical expenses of regular CHC patients are nearly 25 percent lower than those folks who get their care elsewhere -- 25 percent lower."
Walters also has other expansion plans in the works, including doubling the size of La Clinica's urgent care clinic on Fifth Street in Pasco.
The clinic leases half the building from Lourdes Health Network, but is about to sign a deal for the whole building, Walters said.
He plans to start renovations once the lease is finalized and have the expanded facility open for business in May or June.
The clinic also has received approval from the Health Resources and Services Administration to provide preventive dental services, such as exams and fluoride treatments, in schools starting in 2010.
"We are really trying to be more responsive to the growing primary care needs of the community here," Walters said.
-- Michelle Dupler: 509-582-1543; mdupler@tricityherald.com
