By Teresita Batayola

From a small, storefront clinic established in 1973 in Seattle’s International District to provide health care to elderly and retired Chinese and Filipino migrant workers, International Community Health Services (ICHS) has grown to be the largest non-profit health care provider for Washington’s Asian Pacific Islander community.

We are very proud of our steady growth over the years, which we attribute to keeping our eye on one goal: to reach out and serve the neediest and most marginalized Washingtonians in the most culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate way possible.

Unfortunately, the work we’ve done and successes we’ve achieved over the past four decades face a big setback.

Unless Congress acts before Sept. 30, community health centers throughout the nation, including ICHS and the 25 other community health centers in Washington, will lose the mandatory funding provided by the Affordable Care Act. This represents a cut of 70 percent of federal funding for community health centers, which supports our integrated model of care.

The loss of funding, described by some as a “Health Center Funding Cliff,” is a frightening prospect with real consequences for the nation’s community health centers and the 23 million patients they serve. I would like to outline why continuing support for community healthy centers is a good investment.

—Despite many patients receiving health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, coverage does not necessarily translate into access. There remains a shortage of places where patients can go to receive primary and preventive care services, and community health centers fill that role.

—Community health centers, which are governed by a community board, reduce unnecessary and costly visits to hospitals by providing services tailored and responsive to the communities we serve, including many preventive care programs. Nationally, community health centers save the U.S. health care system more than $24 billion a year in reduced overall costs from preventable hospitalizations and unnecessary emergency room visits.

—Community health centers are a major economic engine for the communities they serve. For example, before expanding to Bellevue and Shoreline, ICHS directly generated 305 jobs, supported an additional 119 jobs in other industries, and had an overall economic impact of $36.9 million. To invest in ICHS, and community health centers like it, is to invest in the economic development of local communities and the state of Washington.

ICHS’s four clinics located in the International District, Holly Park, Shoreline, and Bellevue, as well as our school-based services at 10 Seattle-area public schools, provide low-cost health care services to more than 21,000 patients each year. The majority of our patients are our state’s most marginalized: new immigrants, seniors, refugees, those with low incomes, limited-English speaking, the unemployed, and people who are uninsured and underinsured.

We provide vital programs such as those targeting women with breast and cervical cancers; feeding and nutrition for infants and small children; community-based health education outreach; and language and interpretation programs that allow us to reach out to non- or limited-English speaking patients in their own language.

We charge patients based on their ability to pay, and last year, the sliding scale discounts we provided to our qualified uninsured and under-insured patients resulted in an almost $1 million charity write-off.

Investing in community health centers and primary care has never been a partisan issue. President George W. Bush championed health center expansion. We remain hopeful that community health centers’ traditionally bipartisan support in Congress will translate into a fix to this funding cliff and allow us to continue serving Washington’s most vulnerable residents.

Teresita Batayola is CEO of International Community Health Services.

About ICHS

Founded in 1973, ICHS is a nonprofit community health center offering affordable primary medical and dental care, acupuncture, laboratory, pharmacy, behavioral health WIC, and health education services. ICHS’ four full-service medical and dental clinics —located in Seattle’s International District and Holly Park neighborhoods; and in the cities of Bellevue and Shoreline —- serve over 21,000 patients each year. As the only community health center in Washington primarily serving Asians and Pacific Islanders, ICHS provides care in over 50 languages and dialects annually. For more information, visit www.ichs.com.