State doles out first round of funding to health care clinics from Rural Health Care Delivery Fund

The first portion of money aimed at improving health care in rural New Mexico is making its way to health systems across the state.

Eleven health care organizations received a piece of $18 million from the state in the first round of the new Rural Health Care Delivery Fund signed into law this year. A total of $80 million is expected to be doled out by next month.

The money is meant to cover the cost of building new health care clinics — or hospitals — in rural areas of the state or to expand services at existing health care facilities. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration has made expanding the amount of health care services in the state, including rural New Mexico, a priority.

Of the 11 selected in the first round of funding, the Psychiatric Care Center LLC is receiving the largest amount, $3,401,905, to expand “behavioral health services in Curry, De Baca, Lea, Quay, and Roosevelt Counties,” according to the New Mexico Human Services Department.

Covenant Health Hobbs is receiving the second largest amount, $3,252,645, which will go toward expanding labor and delivery, pre- and post-natal care and maternal health in the area.

Others include:

• El Centro Family Health will receive $864,829 for dental health services in Taos County.
• Gallup Community Health will receive $1,209,978 to help increase primary care and behavioral health services in McKinley County.
• Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center, which recently joined the Christus Health system, will get $984,000 for its Ruidoso outpatient clinic and $1,998,000 for its Alamogordo inpatient clinic. The money will help restart in-person outpatient psychiatric services that closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and will help expand inpatient behavioral health in Otero County.
• Laguna Healthcare Corp. will use $1,097,513 to help expand primary care, pharmacy, laboratory and radiology services in Cibola County.
• Mimbres Memorial Hospital in Deming will get $1,863,430 to help expand pediatric outpatient, inpatient, emergency and labor and delivery services in Luna County.
• Nurstead Consulting Services LLC will receive $420,000 to help create a 24/7 drop-in facility for mental health support services in Curry County.
• South Central Colfax County Special Hospital District will get $690,000 to increase primary care services for older adults, and for the expansion of substance use services in Colfax County.
• Sunrise Clinics will get $1,064,096 to expand and increase primary care and behavioral health services for children in Colfax, Guadalupe, Harding, Mora, Quay, Taos, and Torrance counties.
• The Learning Path LLC will get $1,881,570 to expand in-person behavioral health services in Socorro County.

“I am so very grateful that my legislative colleagues supported this funding wholeheartedly,” Democratic Sen. Liza Stefanics of Cerrillos, who sponsored Senate Bill 7 that helped create the funding, said in a statement.

The fund was created for health care projects in counties with fewer than 100,000 people . The state’s five largest counties — Bernalillo, Doña Ana, Santa Fe, Sandoval and San Juan — are not eligible for funding. Combined, those counties make up nearly two-thirds of the state’s population.

The money will mean a boost for expanded services in rural areas. According to a state rural health care plan, at least five counties in New Mexico did not have a hospital located within their boundaries as of 2019, and several other rural counties had health care facilities that offered limited services.

The state received 186 applications for the fund, HSD spokesman Timothy Fowler said. He said the remaining $62 million for other recipients will be announced next month.