Tax credit boosts healthcare services in remote areas of Hawaii

Last week, employees and patients of the Lana'i Community Health Center blessed a new 6,800-square-foot facility.

Previously, patients were crammed into a 1,500-square-foot space in a former plantation building. Those who needed higher-level services took ferries or a $200 plane ride to Maui or one of the more populated neighboring islands. Many of the island's women had to travel far to receive reproductive care.

But the new health center, which treats about half of the island's 3,200 residents, will accommodate an additional 600 to 800 patients every year. The new facility offers adult and pediatric dentistry, telemedicine, optical imaging and ultrasounds for pregnant women and patients with gastrointestinal disorders.

That's all partly due to a federal financing program that is fighting to remain permanently funded.

The New Markets Tax Credit program paid for about a third of the $8 million Lana'i Community Health Center. Advocates of the program, which provides tax credits to investors who fund economic development projects in rural and underserved areas, have been pushing to make it a permanent part of the federal budget as well as increase the allocation to $5 billion from the current $3.5 billion.

President Barack Obama's budget for fiscal 2017 once again supported expanding the program as well as moving to make it permanent.

Earlier this month, a coalition advocating for the program released a report noting that data from the U.S. Treasury Department shows the tax credit has generated over $75 billion in investments to low-income communities and led to more than 750,000 jobs since 2003.

In San Diego, the funding helped create a new maternal and child health facility for a

community health center. In Ohio, Advantage Capital Partners invested $10.9 million in five local companies, including Cleveland HeartLab, which is located in an economically depressed neighborhood and employs people of all educational and economic backgrounds. The capital aims to help HeartLab jump-start its growth.

Back in Lana'i, the federally qualified community health center not only provides medical, vision and behavioral health services but offers training programs for health professionals and a scholarship program for graduating seniors.

“I don't think a community health clinic is generally considered as contributing to the community, but we definitely are,” said Diana Shaw, the center's executive director.

The center, which treated nearly 1,500 people last year, will also offer wellness and fitness classes in a multipurpose room inside the building.

“This is an island where there is no stoplight,” said Tamar deFries, a partner at Pacific Growth Associates, which also is helping to finance the project. “The center of the island is a track field.”

The economy of Lana'i has shifted from pineapple plantations to tourism, but many jobs are still low-wage, she said. Nearly half of residents live on less than 200% of the federal poverty level.

But the clinic, centrally located on the island across from a school, offers young residents a chance to complete their training on Lana'i without having to leave the island, deFries said. It also offers them the chance for better jobs.

“Without the New Markets Tax Credit, this may not have happened,” she said. “They're very mission-based and it's doing what it's supposed to do.”