$1 Million HHS Grant Meant To Encourage Health Information Sharing
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
Your health IT clients could be candidates to apply for a recent grant offering aims to encourage interoperability at the community level.
The award, announced recently by Karen DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc. is a $1 million grant in funds to support projects under the Community Interoperability Health Information Exchange Program. It will fund up to ten community organizations, local or state government agencies, or other community groups, and is intended to help communities better access the power that fluidly exchanged health information has to offer. It is also intended to help those communities make better use of their resources to advance care.
According to Dr. DeSalvo, “The flow of health information across the entire care continuum is a critical step to realizing a learning health system that results in not only better care, but healthier people and communities. The new Community Interoperability And HIE program will fund local efforts that will leverage health IT in support of a more comprehensive digital data picture of health for people and their communities.”
Growth Of HIE
As a result of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) efforts and those of the health community, the U.S. has seen “dramatic advancements” in digitizing our care delivery system including:
- achieving a rate of over 50 percent of office-based professionals and more than 80 percent of hospitals meaningfully using EHRs (electronic health records)
- seeing a rate of more than half of hospitals able to electronically search outside their own systems for patient information
- realizing a standardized format of electronic clinical care summaries that have specified minimum data elements that are required when summaries are exchanged
- having all 50 states using a form of HIE services available to support patient care
Award Requirements
Recipients of the award will demonstrate use of HIT to a range of health providers, including those who are not eligible for Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs. These include:
- long-term and post-acute care providers
- individuals and their caregivers
- public health entities
- social service entities
- emergency medical service providers
- behavioral health providers
- other members of the care continuum
Application And Deadline Information
The submission deadline is June 16, 2015, 11:59 p.m., EDT.
The deadline to submit (optional) intent to apply notices is May 15. Applications are available here and more information about the award can be accessed here.
Questions about the award can be submitted to HIECommunityFOA@hhs.gov.
Awards are scheduled to be announced on August 15, 2015.