“Beth Hale, the chief clinical officer at Lowell Community Health Center, has spent weeks helping to direct the center’s response to an unprecedented pandemic that leaves many of her patients especially vulnerable due to medical and economic issues.”
“The Lowell Community Health Center is slated to become one of 12 new COVID-19 testing sites that will open up at community health centers across the state, Gov. Charlie Baker announced Thursday. The health center, located at 161 Jackson St., is now working to finalize plans for the testing site operations.”
“Community health centers that also serve on the front lines by tending to the neediest of our population have likewise absorbed a significant financial blow as a result of this ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Like smaller and larger urban hospitals, they too have seen revenues go into free-fall with the cancellation of most appointments and elective procedures.”
“The City of Lowell has opened at emergency shelter in the gym of the Stoklosa Middle School with the goal of helping prevent the spread of COVID-19 among the city’s homeless population. The shelter will provide housing to homeless individuals who are asymptomatic but who have been exposed to those who have tested positive for COVID-19. No one who has tested positive will be admitted to the site.”
“Three community health centers — including the Lowell Community Health Center and Community Health Connections in Fitchburg — will receive over $1 million each in federal coronavirus relief funding, U.S Rep. Lori Trahan announced Wednesday. Both the Lowell and Fitchburg health centers have faced significant revenue losses amid the pandemic as a result of canceled elective appointments and procedures.”
“Providers of health care in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods are used to toiling below the radar, treating chronic diseases and other ravages of poverty in places many Americans never see. But the spillover effects of the coronavirus, in cutting off routine procedures and checkups that are the day-to-day rhythm of medical economics, are hitting this sector hard too, with layoffs, furloughs and fears that a system of government-supported clinics dating back to the War on Poverty could collapse.”
