Health First Community Health Center is a non-profit, federally-qualified community health center. We began operations in March of 2010 in Providence, Ky. We now operate eight locations in Caldwell, Daviess, Henderson, Hopkins, Mclean, Union, and Webster counties. In 2023, we served 16,098 patients with 57,873 visits system-wide.
What is a Community Health Center?
Health centers provide high-quality preventive and primary health care to medically underserved and uninsured people. For millions of Americans, including some of the most vulnerable individuals and families, health centers are the essential medical home where they find services that promote health, diagnose and treat disease and disability, and help them cope with environmental challenges that put them at risk.
Data Highlights
- 1 in 11 people in the United States relies on a HRSA-funded health center for medical care.
- Health centers serve 31.5 million patients nationwide.
- Nearly 1,400 health centers operate approximately 12,000 service delivery sites in the U.S.
- Health centers save the health system $24 billion annually and generate $85 billion in economic activity in their communities.
National Association of Community Health Centers 2023
How does our Health Center Work?
According to federal regulations, we must:
- Serve a medically underserved population,
- Provide appropriate and necessary services with fees adjusted on patients’ ability to pay (referred to as the sliding fee scale),
- Demonstrate sound clinical and financial management, and
- Be governed by a board, a majority of which includes health center patients (51%).
We receive Health Center Program grant funding that, on average, constitutes about 25 percent of our operating revenue. The remainder comes from Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance, patient fees, and other resources.
For more information on the HRSA Health Center Program, visit bphc.hrsa.gov.
