Federal grants to Wisconsin clinics allow for increased care

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 18,000 additional people will get health care at three Wisconsin community clinics recently awarded federal grants.

Three clinics —in Sheboygan, Marshfield and Green Bay— will share in $2.2 million. Bonnie Kuhr is CEO of N.E.W Community Clinic in Green Bay. It used to get its money from local hospitals. Those facilities funded the clinic in hopes of reducing emergency room use for conditions that didn’t require acute medical care. Kuhr says the new federal grant money of $903,000 will help pay for a dental clinic that just opened in December: “They talked about these grants being funded, so we did start up that program to make sure that if we did get the funding it would be up and running. We had raised some local money until this grant came through.”

The grant money will also pay for additional medical staff. Kuhr says they mostly serve the uninsured, and the demand is high: “[At] 7:45 we start taking phone calls to book the next day and oftentime, within a half hour we are booked. So there’s a lot of need out there. ”

Two other clinics got federal money: Sheboygan Area Community Clinics will get $650,000. The same amount will go to Family Health Center of Marshfield.