Heartland Community Health Center receives $674K in federal grants to respond to pandemic

photo by: Ashley Hocking

The entrance to Heartland Community Health Center, 346 Maine St., Suite 150, is shown Friday, Jan. 26, 2018.

Heartland Community Health Center is one of 18 community health centers statewide that will receive a portion of $15 million in federal grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Sen. Jerry Moran announced in a news release on April 8 that Heartland would receive $674,870. The grants, which were made available through the Phase III Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, will be used by the community health centers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through detection, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the virus.

Robyn Coventon, CEO of Heartland, said the money was “a huge win for us and for the community. That’s not an insignificant amount of funding, and it’s got quite a bit of flexibility in how we can use that funding.”

Coventon said the funds would help the center maintain its current staffing levels as well as make infrastructure improvements that will help upgrade equipment and improve Telehealth efforts.

What the money won’t be able to mitigate, Coventon said, is lost revenue. Patient visits have been down and the percentage of patients without insurance has been “exceptionally high,” Coventon said.

Nevertheless, the funds have brought a “sigh of relief,” she said, and will help the organization adapt to changing health care practices in the future, which Coventon said could include an increased focus on Telehealth appointments.

In the news release about the distribution of the funds, Moran said, “Community health centers are on the frontlines of our fight against COVID-19 and remain critical to our ability to stop the spread of this virus. I have been urging the administration to move quickly to make relief provided in Phase III available to our state, and these resources will provide timely support to Kansas health centers.”

In addition to the 18 community health centers receiving funding, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment will also receive funding in the amount of $634,385.

What to do if you think you may have COVID-19

Patients who have symptoms — difficulty breathing, cough and fever — should stay home, immediately isolate themselves from others and call their health care providers. Patients should never show up unannounced at a medical office or hospital. Instead, they should call ahead to explain their symptoms and give health care workers the ability to minimize the risk to others.

If patients do not have health care providers, they may call the Lawrence Douglas-County health department’s coronavirus line, 785-856-4343.

For updated information on the outbreak, Kansas residents can email COVID-19@ks.gov or call 866-534-3463 (866-KDHEINF), which is staffed 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday; and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

More information can be found through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s website or the Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health website.