The latest policy brief from the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health projects that a substantial majority of the nation’s nearly 1,400 community health centers, which served 31.3 million people in 2023, are likely to experience significant losses in 2024, as the cost of operations and service delivery continues to outpace revenue. This report is the first to look at the current and potential shortfalls for health centers as COVID-era protections come to an end.
Utilizing UDS data, Geiger Gibson researchers compare the period beginning with 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, through 2023, when public health emergency protections ended. Health centers have rebounded from pandemic-related declines in patient volume and visits, continuing to provide a broad range of essential primary and preventive care to underserved communities.
COVID-era support including continuous Medicaid enrollment and supplemental funding bolstered health center finances, and in 2021 health centers nationally had a net margin – that is, the difference between revenues and costs – of 5.3%. But as these supports ended, the analysis shows that costs continued to grow while grant revenue declined, causing margins to plummet to 1.6% by 2023. Nearly half of all health centers had negative margins in 2023. It is anticipate that losses will increase in 2024, with many more health centers operating in the red. This analysis underscores the urgency of both bolstering and stabilizing health center funding to ensure access and quality.
The brief, Community Health Centers Grew Through 2023, But Serious Hazards Are on the Horizon, is available now along with our complete policy research archive. You’ll find the related press release here.