June 27, 2024
Spending plan closes health disparities and improves care for Travis County’s most vulnerable residents
AUSTIN – For policymakers and news watchers in Central Texas, summer is budget season, and it’s no different for Travis County’s hospital district. Central Health has proposed an $880.3 million budget for fiscal year 2025, which begins October 1, and the district is ready to hear feedback from the community and its local officials.
There are several ways you can share your input with Central Health, including by attending a Community Conversation on Monday, July 1, 11 a.m.–1 p.m., at the city of Austin’s Permitting and Development Center near ACC Highland, at 6310 Wilhelmina Delco Drive in north central Austin. Free garage parking is available and tasty, healthy lunches will be provided.
Attendees can learn directly from Central Health’s Board of Managers and leadership team about how the district is closing health disparities in Travis County and building a healthier and stronger community for everyone. Central Health’s Healthcare Equity Plan calls for more than $750 million in new investment over seven years (this is year 2) to close gaps in the local safety net healthcare system that serves Travis County residents with low income.
That includes a major increase in specialty care services available to people enrolled in Central Health’s Medical Access Program, or MAP. In the first nine months of this fiscal year, Central Health has opened 15 new lines of specialty care and clinical support services – from podiatry and gastroenterology to palliative care, wound care, pharmacy and ultrasounds. In August, Central Health will see its first patients at the newly renovated Rosewood-Zaragosa health clinic in East Austin, now a multi-specialty clinic.
Central Health’s plans also include providing better care to some of Travis County’s most vulnerable residents. The district is placing its own care teams into skilled nursing facilities, taking the lead to improve medical services for inmates at Travis County’s jails, working with Integral Care to help people in crisis and provide 24-hour psychiatric emergency services, and has helped more than 200 people so far who don’t have stable housing rest and recover from their hospitalizations and receive needed follow-up care.
The district is looking at its options to expand this medical respite program in fiscal 2025, including by using space at the old Brackenridge Hospital campus downtown, which Central Health owns. In addition to the Rosewood-Zaragosa clinic, Central Health is developing new clinics in Del Valle and Colony Park and renovating the old Sears store at Hancock Center.
You can check out Central Health’s budget proposal here. The board will meet in late July and several times in August to deliberate and adopt its final fiscal 2025 budget, which then goes to the Travis County Commissioners Court for approval in September.