This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.
Patrick Lohmann
Source New Mexico
Federal health officials and Santa Ana Pueblo leaders on Friday announced that a new $251 million healthcare facility will be built on what is now a dusty lot on Pueblo land west of Albuquerque.
What will eventually become a 235,000-square-foot outpatient facility aims to serve Indigenous patients who live on nearby tribal land, including the Zia, Jemez and Sandia Pueblos, or in growing population centers like Albuquerque and Rio Rancho.
The facility, once built, will employ more than 500 people and offer health care services including dental, optometry, dialysis and diabetes care, Santa Ana Pueblo officials said Friday during a news conference, as well as traditional and culturally relevant healing practices.
“The need is great in this area,” Santa Ana Pueblo Gov. Myron Armijo said. “Our people have to go to the emergency facilities here in the Rio Rancho area. This facility will provide those services, outpatient services, to the entire region, right here.”
The planning phase for the Santa Ana Pueblo project begins shortly, with the help of $22 million that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has committed for the project. Officials said they hope construction will begin in 2027. The site officials selected for the project sits on Santa Ana Pueblo land east of the Bernalillo Soccer Complex, off U.S. 550, one of the major Rio Rancho arteries.
The closest IHS facility is in Albuquerque, which officials said Friday is often over capacity. Building a new facility west of the city will cut driving times by more than half for members of five nearby pueblos, according to a presentation from Geoffrey Blackwell, the CEO of Tamaya Ventures, a Pueblo-owned economic development subsidiary.
Federal Indian Health Service officials identified the need for such a facility in 1993, placing it on alist of priority projects, along with major upgrades to the IHS medical center in Albuquerque and other facilities in New Mexico. In the decades since, the facilities have remained on the list, part of a growing backlog.
Last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., during an event celebrating IHS’ 70th anniversary, announced that he’d directed $1 billion in existing HHS funding toward addressing the projects stalled for decades.
“We allowed that backlog to grow for too long,” Kennedy said at the event March 4.
However, HHS officials said Friday that the total cost to complete projects on the list totals roughly $8 billion. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, nine projects remained on the list as of April 2023, five of which are in New Mexico.
They include the project announced Friday, along with the Gallup Indian Medical Center, the Albuquerque Indian Health Center, as well as IHS clinics on the Alamo Navajo Reservation near Socorro and Pueblo Pintado in northeast New Mexico.
HHS Senior Advisor Mark Cruz visited New Mexico this week, and attended Friday’s news event. He also toured the Gallup Indian Medical Center on Thursday, following criticism from members of the New Mexico congressional delegation. U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, both New Mexico Democrats, first invited Cruz to visit Gallup beginning last year amid reports of cuts to IHS by Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”
According to an IHS social media post Friday, Cruz’s visit to the Gallup Indian Medical Center featured visits to potential sites for the facility’s replacement, and toured ongoing construction to the center’s emergency department.
On Friday, Cruz noted that Congress currently awards about $200 million to IHS a year in funds that can be used toward the $8 billion backlog, and called on Congress to find additional funding for the remaining projects.
“At that rate, it’s another 40 years to get through,” he said.
The post Santa Ana Pueblo announces new U.S. Indian Health Service outpatient clinic appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.