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The waiting room is full. It has never been this full. 🏥
It is National Health Center Week, and the numbers just landed.
According to xtelligent Patient Engagement, HRSA-funded health clinics treated 32.7 million patients in 2025. That is a historic high for the 61-year-old Health Center Program. Up more than 350,000 patients from 2024.
And the NACHC figure is even bigger: 1 in 7 Americans now receives care from a community health center. That includes 1 in 3 in rural America.
One year ago that number was 1 in 10.
Let that sink in.
Those 52.3 million patients are being seen by 340,000 healthcare professionals working across 1,526 CHCs in 17,400 communities. These are not abstract policy numbers. That is a massive, distributed primary care system holding the country together.
And it is not just showing up. It is doing the hard clinical work:
– More than 10 million patients screened for colorectal, breast, and cervical cancers
– 126,000 patients achieved controlled diabetes
– 163,000 achieved controlled hypertension
– 713,000 patients received BMI screening and follow-up
– 199,000 kids received weight assessment and nutrition counseling
This is what prevention at scale actually looks like. Not a slide deck. Not a press release. Real clinical throughput in clinics that see everyone, regardless of ability to pay.
Here is what most people outside the safety net do not see.
Every one of those encounters happens inside a funding structure that never fully stabilizes. Community health centers run on two buckets: a discretionary fund covering about 30% of federal dollars, replenished annually, and a mandatory fund covering the remaining 70%. That mandatory fund is supposed to be long-term. But NACHC has spent decades lobbying a gridlocked Congress just to keep the lights on.
This year, NACHC is asking for a $300 million increase from FY 2026 levels. The goal is to expand IT infrastructure, grow behavioral health and nutrition services, and build new access points like mobile health units.
That ask is not aggressive. It is proportional to the load these centers are already carrying.
💡 Save this if you work in or alongside community health. The gap between what CHCs are delivering and what they are funded to deliver is the defining operational tension in the safety net right now.
The record numbers are real. So is the pressure behind them.
When 1 in 7 Americans depends on your network, the stakes of underfunding are not theoretical. They show up in wait times, in staffing shortages, in the appointment that does not get scheduled.
These centers deserve a funding model as durable as the communities they serve.
👉 Follow Jonathan Govette, CEO of Oatmeal Health, for daily healthcare insights on LinkedIn. Deeper dives in The Oatmeal Bite on Substack: https://news.oatmealhealth.com
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Author:
CEO/Co-Founder @ Oatmeal Health | AI Lung Cancer Screening | Almost Became a Doctor | Engineer | Follow to Share What I’ve Learned Along the Way
I help patients get the care they need earlier, preventing late-stage cancer.
That’s been the throughline across three companies and almost 20 years in healthcare. At ReferralMD, we fixed broken referral networks so patients didn’t fall through the cracks. At Oatmeal Health, it’s lung cancer: building the diagnostic and screening infrastructure so the 85% of cases caught too late get caught early instead.
Today as CEO of Oatmeal Health, I lead a team embedding AI into radiology workflows to turn routine lung CT scans into reimbursable cancer risk assessments. We partner with FQHCs to reach underserved communities, and with health systems and payers to make early detection economically sustainable. Think HeartFlow or Cleerly, but for lungs.
Between companies, I advised at Techstars and Plug and Play, mentoring founders building in digital health. That experience shaped how I think about what separates companies that ship from companies that stall: distribution, reimbursement, and clinical trust, not just technology.
I’m a CancerX alumnus, a 3x healthcare founder, and someone who believes the biggest problems in cancer aren’t scientific. They’re operational.
We’re hiring mission-driven builders at Oatmeal Health. If you want to work on something that matters, reach out.
When I’m not working, I’m traveling, mentoring, and keeping up with one very energetic husky. 🐾
Substack – The Oatmeal Bite:
Millions of patients get less care because of who they are, where they live, or how they look. I’m fighting to change that. CEO @OatmealHealth, a startup built for the underserved. The Oatmeal Bite: intel for clinicians, investors, and advocates.
Jonathan Govette
CEO of Oatmeal Health
Substack:
https://oatmealhealthjonathangovette.substack.com/
