Sebelius, Blumenthal Announce Plans to Establish Health IT ‘Beacon Communities’
In a press briefing the morning of December 2, 2009, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal announced a new $235 million cooperative grant program for “Beacon Communities” to guide local areas, shed light on best practices with meaningful use of Electronic Health Records and information exchange, and demonstrate to areas nationwide how these Health IT applications can be used to improve health quality. These grants, ranging from $10 to $20 million, are expected to go to 15 local communities, county or state governments or other geographic entities.
–HHS Press Release on Beacon Communities December 2, 2009
–Blumenthal also released his fifth Update letter to the public on Dec 2, 2009, and I’ve posted it on e-Healthcare Marketing.
From the funding synopsis on grants.gov: “ The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program will provide funding to communities to build and strengthen their health information technology (health IT) infrastructure and exchange capabilities to demonstrate the vision of the future where hospitals, clinicians and patients are meaningful users of health IT, and together the community achieves measurable improvements in health care quality, safety, efficiency, and population health. Awards will be made in the form of cooperative agreements to approximately 15 qualified non-profit organizations or government entities representing geographic health care communities.
“Selected communities must already be national leaders in the advancement of health IT, workflow redesign and care coordination, or quality monitoring and feedback. In addition, successful communities must have advanced rates of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and health information exchange (HIE), and the readiness to incorporate health IT to advance community-level care coordination and quality monitoring and feedback. Cooperative agreement recipients will evolve and advance their existing competencies in these three areas over a 36-month performance period. Individually and in aggregate, the Beacon Communities will generate and disseminate valuable lessons learned that will be applicable to the rest of the nation’s communities as they strive to build and leverage their health IT infrastructure for healthcare improvement.”
Eligible Applicants
“State governments
County governments
City or township governments
Special district governments
Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
Private institutions of higher education”
ONC’s Beacon Community Cooperative Program Funding Page
Excerpts from ONC Web site section on Beacon Communities Program:
Facts-at-a-Glance (html)
Funding Opportunity Announcement FOA): [DOC 312 KB]
To see the full announcement, go to http://www.grants.gov/search/basic.do and search for CFDA# 93.727
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