Those who saw the movie “Thelma and Louise” cannot forget the famous final scene when the two lead characters, played by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, drove their green 1966 Thunderbird convertible over the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Symbolically, the move represented freedom and liberation, but we all know that careening off of the cliff also meant the end.

What 200,000 Mainers might not realize is their primary care providers, Maine’s Community Health Centers, may be approaching a similar fate. Although, instead of facing a fall into the Grand Canyon, these patients face losing essential health services due to the primary care cliff — which is the drop-off of funding to the CHCs in Maine and across the nation.

Unless Congress works immediately to address that issue, all of Maine’s CHCs, with sites stretching from Fort Kent to Springvale, Bethel to Eastport and dozens of sites in between, stand to lose up to 70 percent of their federal funding on Oct. 1 ,2015.

The impact of those cuts will be far-reaching. Thousands of patients would lose access to their high quality primary care, some would also lose their primary source of behavioral and dental health services. Hundreds of jobs would be lost, many in Maine’s most rural, underserved and economically challenged areas. Some effects would be sudden and direct, while others have potential for longer term consequences.

You could be one of the patients impacted and not even know it. The one in seven Mainers who seek care at local CHCs may not realize they are patients of those practices because CHCs have names like any other primary care provider, but they are unique in the way they integrate behavioral health, oral health, chronic disease management service and particularly in the way they are governed.

Patients make up more than 50 percent of the governing boards of directors of all CHCs. That means that community members, families, local business owners and officials — people you see every day — have a direct say in the health care the community receives.

The irony with the timing of this primary care cliff and impending federal funding crisis is that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Community Health Center movement. Through the course of those decades, CHCs in the United States have come to generate $24 billion annually in cost savings for the health care system and have an economic impact of $26.5 billion nationally.

All across the country, those high-quality, low-cost providers, serving 23 million individuals, are torn between wanting to celebrate the considerable achievements they have made in providing community-based, patient-centered care, and fearing what may happen if they lose the critical financial support that has helped to sustain them through the past half century.

Members of Congress can steer the public away from falling off the cliff by urging their leadership to reauthorize the Health Centers Program before the end of the federal fiscal year.

Maine’s congressional delegation must continue their strong support of Community Health Centers and make continued efforts to prevent the primary care cliff from taking effect.

Thelma and Louise decided to drive over the cliff “to keep going,” but the Community Health Centers need to do the opposite to achieve that very goal. We need to build the bridge over the chasm to continue the important work that has been done during the past 50 years.

Maine’s Community Health Centers have come a long way and we intend to make even greater progress toward a healthier Maine for 50 years and many more to come.

Vanessa Santarelli is the chief executive officer of the Maine Primary Care Association, a nonprofit organization that provides advocacy, support, training and technical assistance to Maine’s 20 Community Health Centers.