Influencing Government Entities to Strengthen California’s Health Center Operations
CPCA has always prioritized state and national partnerships that further the mission of the Association, and by extension, the important work of community health centers. In the last few months, CPCA leveraged two such partnerships to benefit health center workforce and building standards specifically. Read on for more information.
Workforce: Improving Health Professional Shortage Area Designation (HPSA) Methodologies
Recognizing that HPSA designations significantly impact the deployment the National Health Service Corp (NHSC) within Community Health Centers (CHCs), CPCA submitted a set of member driven recommendations that called attention to the inadvertent data gaps created through the existing methodology. In March, HRSA announced its intention to update all CHC HPSA scores in September through its existing methodology but will now allow an expanded number of variable data sources to be factored into scores for CHCs that do not report Uniform Data System (UDS) data. CPCA is pleased to see this announcement, recognizing the Association's stakeholder letter advocated for the expansion of data sources to better accommodate the uniqueness of safety-net facilities that do not report UDS data.
Currently, stakeholder recommendations on HPSA score methodologies are being reviewed by HRSA, including the additional CPCA's stakeholder recommendations tied to methodology improvements. As we await HRSA's final decision on changes to the HPSA methodology, CPCA has continued to work with state and federal agencies to provide technical assistance and, ultimately, prepare CHCs for HRSA’s National HPSA scoring update scheduled for the summer of 2021.
Staying the Course on Mitigating OSHPD 3 Challenges
CPCA staff convened Community Clinic Advisory Committee (CAC) meetings between January 2020 and March 2021 to identify and discuss various building standard challenges, with the goal of streamlining existing requirements and aligning them with the operations and services of community health centers. With guidance from CPCA’s Licensing & OSHPD 3 Workgroup (LOWG) and health center members on the CAC, staff identified close to 20 OSHPD 3 challenges to address through the CAC. Members selected the highest priority items to begin working on and OSHPD accepted those recommendations. CPCA staff continue to work with OSHPD, members of the CAC, and LOWG to address the unresolved challenges, which are complex and require thoughtful planning and administrative and legislative engagement.