Health IT Projects Included in HHS’ Grants To Improve Patient Care

On Tuesday, HHS announced 39 organizations that have been awarded a total of $685 million in grants to help improve patient care, in part through health IT and the use of patient data, the Wall Street Journal reports.

According to the Journal, the grants reflect the Obama administration’s effort to shift from fee-for-service to value-based payment models (Armour, Wall Street Journal, 9/29).

Grant Details

HHS’ Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative awards include:

• 29 Practice Transformation Networks, which will offer clinicians technical assistance and peer-support; and
• 10 Support and Alignment Networks, which will focus on creating collaboratives for providers to improve care (CMS release, 9/29).

According to the Journal, the funding will be used to support various ambulatory programs, including continuing to educate and train providers on how to use patient data to improve care. The grant recipients’ programs aim to improve patient outcomes and communication through various strategies, such as enabling patients to email their providers.

In a release, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said, “These awards will give patients more of the information they need to make informed decisions about their care and give clinicians access to information and support to improve care coordination and quality outcomes” (Wall Street Journal, 9/29).

Health IT-Related Recipients

The Practice Transformation Networks that leverage health IT include:

• Arizona Health-e Connection, which will provide clinicians with technical and communications assistance, as well as IT support;
• Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing, which will provide clinicians with health IT assistance and educational webinars;
• Consortium for Southeastern Hypertension Control, which will use a distance-learning platform — supported by data warehousing, analytics and Web-based educational tools — to train and educate clinicians;
• Health Partners Delmarva, which will share health IT with clinicians and provide them with access to groups to learn about access to data and analytics, among other things;
• National Council for Behavioral Health, which will help clinicians use a technology platform to facilitate communication between providers and across organizations;
• New York eHealth Collaborative, which will track improvements among key indicators, including measures for Physician Quality Reporting System enrollment and reporting, and the meaningful use of health IT;
• Trustees of Indiana University, which will provide technical assistance in meaningful use and PQRS;
• Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which will use various informatics tools to bolster the collection and management of clinical data, provide clinical decision support and collect patient-reported data; and
• VHS Valley Health Systems, which will develop an analytics and reporting team to facilitate reporting of quality and claims data from payers and providers.

The Support and Alignment Networks with health IT components include the:

• American College of Radiology, which will coach participants in data collection, as well as in the use of PQRS and the adoption of clinical decision-support software; and
• American Psychiatric Association, which will train psychiatrists in the use of telemedicine tools, registries and real-time clinical outcome data to improve quality and outcomes (CMS fact sheet, 9/29).

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