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Track enacted law, pending legislation, regulations, and ballot measures affecting FQHC funding, workforce, and patient access.
Updated: Oct 1, 2026 · Reviewed: Aug 26, 2026
14
Tracked Items
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Critical
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High Impact
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With Deadlines
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Federal
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California
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Other States
14 policy records · sorted by impact
Current federal law provides $4.6 billion for the Community Health Center Fund in FY2026 and $1,159,452,055 for October 1 through December 31, 2026. The same section provides $350 million for the National Health Service Corps in FY2026 and $88,219,178 for that three-month bridge. The cited statute contains no authority beyond December 31, 2026.
FQHC Impact:
This is the national mandatory funding and NHSC workforce clock. The statute does not establish that a particular center's award balance, staffing, or services stop on that date; local decisions require the center's current Notice of Award and any later enacted law or HRSA guidance.
The House Appropriations Committee-reported proposal recommends $1,858,772,000 in annual discretionary funding for primary health care, flat to the enacted FY2026 amount. It was not enacted by October 1. Instead, the stopgap P.L. 119-103 (signed September 2, 2026) continues FY2026 funding through December 11, 2026, and the reported text does not extend the separate Community Health Center Fund authority that ends December 31.
FQHC Impact:
The House figure is a proposal, not award authority or guaranteed center revenue. A continuing resolution would be governed by its enacted duration, rate, terms, and anomalies; it should not be assumed to extend the mandatory fund or every award term.
Public Law 119-21 was enacted July 4, 2025. It created the Rural Health Transformation Program and enacted Medicaid eligibility, community-engagement, and financing provisions with separate implementation dates and exceptions.
FQHC Impact:
The law is the authority behind current state work-requirement implementation and RHTP awards. It does not itself identify an FQHC's payment, patient loss, staffing change, or award; those require state rules, agency guidance, and named award records.
AB 2161 is law: the chaptered text records the governor's approval on September 14, 2026 (the bill history lists the action on September 15) as Chapter 209, Statutes of 2026, amending Welfare and Institutions Code Section 14005.69. For people renewing Medi-Cal during a six-month redetermination who otherwise meet all eligibility criteria, counties must keep coverage active while work or community-engagement verification is pending, until at least the last day of the month of the 30-day period that follows a notice of noncompliance; that notice is deemed received five days after its date, and self-attestation that it did not arrive in time counts as good cause. Counties must ask people to confirm information before acting on conflicting data, and DHCS must consider every other basis of Medi-Cal eligibility before denying or ending coverage. DHCS may defer any of these changes that would require an additional appropriation that has not been made.
FQHC Impact:
For health center enrollment and eligibility staff, the law sets the verification rules patients will meet once the requirement starts, no sooner than January 1, 2027: renewing patients who otherwise qualify keep active coverage at least until the last day of the month of the 30-day period after a noncompliance notice, patients can attest that a notice did not reach them in time and that counts as good cause, and no one should be denied or dropped before every other Medi-Cal eligibility pathway is considered. DHCS may defer provisions that would need an appropriation that has not been made, so check DHCS implementation guidance before training staff.
Proposition 44 is qualified for California's November 3 ballot. The official title says it would require nonprofit FQHCs and Look-Alikes to spend at least 90% of revenue on program services, permit a CDPH waiver for exceptional circumstances, require Attorney General guidance, and establish refund, penalty, and false-reporting provisions.
FQHC Impact:
The measure directly covers nonprofit FQHCs and Look-Alikes, but it has not been approved by voters. The official qualified-measures page does not establish a per-center compliance cost, closure count, staffing effect, or election outcome.
GovInfo identifies the August 5, 2026 measure as S. 5244. It was introduced, read twice, and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; it is not enacted law. The proposal addresses contract pharmacies, patient eligibility, a third-party data clearinghouse, transparency, and audits. Section 5 would, only after enactment, require HHS to conclude the 340B Rebate Model Pilot within one year, not expand it, discontinue it at one year, and transition to the proposed clearinghouse. HRSA's revised pilot under 91 FR 48883 is a separate current agency process; a manufacturer plan submission is not an approval.
FQHC Impact:
S. 5244 could change contract-pharmacy, patient-definition, and data workflows if enacted, but introduction creates no current FQHC payment, compliance, staffing, or service change. Continue to follow current law and official HRSA pilot materials; do not treat an August 24 manufacturer submission, the proposed section 5 sunset, or the proposed clearinghouse transition as implemented.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee ordered H.R. 9393 reported 45-0 in the nature of a substitute on July 21. Related primary text in H.R. 8201 would amend Section 330 to make behavioral health, mental health, and substance-use-disorder services required primary health services rather than optional additional services. No House floor or Senate action is reported, and no money is obligated.
FQHC Impact:
If enacted, the required-service language would create scope, staffing, contract, or referral implications. HRSA has not issued implementation guidance, and the committee action does not resolve the December 31 Community Health Center Fund boundary.
HRSA published its revised final notice on August 3 with a January 1, 2027 effective date. Manufacturer plans were due August 24, and HRSA said approvals, if any, will be made by September 24, 2026. An approved plan must give covered entities and other affected stakeholders 90 calendar days' notice before it is implemented.
FQHC Impact:
The final notice declined an FQHC carve-out, so covered entities should track official approvals and implementation instructions. Submission of a manufacturer plan is not approval, and no manufacturer should be treated as active under the pilot until HRSA says so.
AB 2348 is law. The bill history records “Approved by the Governor” and “Chaptered by Secretary of State — Chapter 600, Statutes of 2026” both on September 27, 2026; it had been presented to the Governor on August 31. The chaptered text requires DHCS to maintain policy guides and all-plan letters defining coverage standards for each community support; publish ECM and Community Supports utilization data quarterly, to the extent feasible, until January 1, 2032; release written policy changes no later than six months before their effective date, with effective dates set at January 1 or July 1; and by March 31, 2029 report to the Legislature on transitioning community supports to required Medi-Cal benefits, drawing on the final community supports evaluation due to CMS by December 31, 2028.
FQHC Impact:
The new law does not bridge the December 31, 2026 CalAIM authority gap — the date January 1, 2027 appears nowhere in the chaptered text. The transition-to-required-benefit question is deferred to a March 31, 2029 legislative report, and the reporting paragraph goes inoperative January 1, 2032. Centers should not budget 2027 revenue as if this law supplies authority. The one operationally useful provision is the six-month advance-notice rule on policy changes, which gives ECM and Community Supports programs a predictable planning runway.
Subtitle U directs the Department of Health Care Finance to award $800,000 total by October 31 to at least two FQHCs or Look-Alikes whose patient populations are at least 20% uninsured. The act is emergency legislation; the source names no recipient.
FQHC Impact:
$800,000 is the total program amount, not a per-center award. No organization should be described as eligible or funded until DHCF publishes its criteria and awards.
Gov. Newsom signed SB 1311 (Wahab) on September 14, 2026 as Chapter 232, Statutes of 2026, an urgency measure that took effect immediately. Among licensing changes for several professions, it amends Business and Professions Code Section 2125, which governs the Licensed Physicians from Mexico Program: applications are now due between October 1, 2025 and July 1, 2026, instead of by December 31, 2025, and the Medical Board of California may accept up to 15 applications after July 1, 2026 and before January 1, 2028. The law also lets an unlicensed dental assistant take the Dental Assisting National Board's Infection Control examination instead of completing an infection control course.
FQHC Impact:
The Mexico physicians program is built around community health centers: under Section 2125, a program licensee may practice only in the nonprofit community health center that offered the licensee employment and the corresponding hospital, and no more than 155 participants may hold an active license at once before January 1, 2029, with no more than 30 in psychiatry. The main application window had already closed when the bill was signed, so the remaining opening is the 15 late applications the board may accept before January 1, 2028. Health centers recruiting under the program, such as Petaluma Health Center, should confirm with the Medical Board how applications submitted between January 1 and July 1, 2026 are handled. The dental-assistant change gives health center dental programs a second way to meet the infection control requirement.
AB 1307 (Ávila Farías) IS LAW. The Governor approved it on 09/20/26 and the Secretary of State chaptered it the same day as Chapter 363, Statutes of 2026 — verified on the bill's own status page, which reads Type of Measure "Inactive Bill - Chaptered" and House Location "Secretary of State". It repeals the old Licensed Dentists from Mexico Pilot Program and enacts a new one at Business and Professions Code § 1645.4: the Dental Board of California "shall accept 30 participating dentists", issues each a three-year nonrenewable license, and keeps an alternate list. A license "shall not carry any designation that the participant is a participant in the program". The employment clause is the reason this belongs on an FQHC tracker: "A participant may only be employed by a federally qualified health center that meets all of the following conditions" — a HPSA or dental HPSA in the service area as determined by HCAI, dental quality assurance protocols, and accreditation by The Joint Commission, AAAHC or NCQA (or affiliation with an FQHC that has it). The program and its evaluation are paid for entirely by philanthropic foundations, and the Board is to implement "within six months of receiving an amount of philanthropic funds".
FQHC Impact:
This is a hiring channel, not a payment change. The statute sets no rate and makes no prospective payment claim; it requires only that participants' services be reimbursable under Medicare, Medi-Cal fee-for-service, Medi-Cal managed care and private insurance. What it creates is a pool of 30 licensed dentists who by law can work nowhere except a qualifying FQHC — meaningful in a year when roughly two million adults with unsatisfactory immigration status lose Medi-Cal adult dental and health center dental capacity is the binding constraint. Two operational gates decide whether a center can use it: the accreditation requirement (Joint Commission, AAAHC or NCQA, or affiliation with an accredited FQHC), which many health centers do not meet; and the peer-review load, since the employing center must arrange ten secondary peer reviews of randomly selected encounters per participant every six months with a CODA-accredited California dental school. There is no start date to plan around: the Board's six-month clock begins only when philanthropic funds arrive, and the chaptered text names no funder.
AB 2756 is law. The bill history records “Approved by the Governor” and “Chaptered by Secretary of State — Chapter 309, Statutes of 2026” both on September 18, 2026, after the Senate passed it 39-0 on August 20 and the Assembly concurred 78-0 on August 24. It adds Section 14132.916 to the Welfare and Institutions Code. Three statutory dates now run: by January 1, 2028 DHCS must establish a list of performance measures for Medi-Cal vision services covering utilization, access and availability; by January 1, 2029 that list plus the corresponding calendar-year 2026 data must be posted on the department’s website, and annually thereafter; and following the initial three reporting years beginning in calendar year 2026, DHCS must set an initial benchmark for each measure by no later than July 1, 2029, for use beginning in calendar year 2030. The measures apply to both fee-for-service and managed care, including specialized managed care plans that provide vision services, and must be reported with an equity framework stratified by geographic and demographic factors including race, ethnicity, primary language, age and gender. One limiting provision matters for expectations: subdivision (a)(4) requires DHCS to report a measure only to the extent it already has a data source for it, and expressly does not require the department to build a new data-collection mechanism or gather additional data. Scope boundary, verified against the chaptered text on September 21, 2026: the phrases “federally qualified health center,” “rural health clinic,” “prospective payment” and “Section 330” appear zero times; the act sets no rate and changes no benefit. The bill was introduced on 2026-02-20 as a unified health care financing measure and rewritten into vision services on 2026-03-02. Its finding is that only one in six school-age children enrolled in Medi-Cal receives basic primary care services — a measure of primary care, not of eye exams.
FQHC Impact:
The act creates a state reporting framework, not a new FQHC payment, patient entitlement or site-level performance finding — the chaptered text names neither FQHCs nor prospective payment. What health centers should note is what will become public: from January 1, 2029 DHCS must post, per rendering provider, annual eye examinations, vision screenings, eyeglasses prescribed and eyeglasses dispensed, plus each provider’s claim count and credentials — and the statute defines rendering providers to include optometrists, ophthalmologists, pediatricians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Health centers that deliver vision care through primary care staff rather than an on-site optometrist will therefore appear in that dataset. Because subdivision (a)(4) limits reporting to measures DHCS already has data for, how much of this actually publishes depends on the department’s existing data sources, so watch DHCS implementation guidance rather than assuming the full measure set arrives.
Missouri's official 2026 ballot-measures page lists Amendment 3 for November 3. The official title says a yes vote would repeal the 2024 reproductive-healthcare right through viability, replace it with narrower abortion exceptions, permit regulation and parental consent, restrict public funding, and prohibit specified transition procedures for minors subject to listed exceptions.
FQHC Impact:
The measure could affect the state policy environment, but the official title names no FQHC, patient count, payment, job, or site-level effect. It remains a ballot proposal, not current law.
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