Understanding Complexity, Utilization Patterns of Patients at FQHCs

Providers who treat high-need, high-cost patients can face challenges to deliver efficient and effective care. Health centers funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)—otherwise known as federally qualified health canters or FQHCs—provide care to nearly 30 million Americans, many of whom are uninsured or underinsured.

Because data on these patients’ complexity and utilization patterns are limited, researchers set out to better define these patient populations using information from the 2014 Health Center Patient Survey.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Nadereh Pourat, PhD, MSPH, associate center director and the director of the health economics and evaluation research program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and Alex Sripipatana, PhD, MPH, director of the division of data and evaluation at HRSA. Pourat, Sripipatant and colleagues recently published the HRSA-funded study “Intersection of Complexity and High Utilization among health center patients aged 18 to 64” in The American Journal of Managed Care^®.

HRSA oversees the Health Research Program and works to identify opportunities to better support this program's mission of providing access to high quality and cost-effective care to historically medically underserved communities. This work is part of the administration's goal of enhancing health center quality and performance. Additional health center research articles can be found on HRSA's Health Center Research and Evaluation webpage.

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