HRSA’s Office of Rural Health Policy recently released the “Small Health Care Provider Quality Improvement (Rural Quality) Grant announcement to provide funding to improve patient care and chronic disease outcomes. The funding will help rural primary care providers implement quality improvement strategies and particularly focus on quality improvement for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
By improving chronic disease management in rural primary care settings, the goal is to:
- Implement and use an electronic patient registry system
- Track and report specific health indicators by using nationally accepted performance measures
- Assess the need for additional quality improvement activities
- Participate in monthly conference calls and peer learning workshops
This program will provide funding for FY 2008 and 2009 with $4,500,000 available annually to fund 60 grantees. Rural Quality applicants may request up to $75,000 per fiscal year.
To be eligible for the program, the applicant organization must meet one of three geographic requirements, the applicant must be a rural public, or rural non-profit private healthcare provider, or a provider of healthcare services such as critical access hospital or rural health clinic, or be part of a network of small rural providers providing local care that has not previously received a grant, or be a faith-based and community-based organization.
The letter of intent deadline is February 08, 2008 and the application deadline is March 20, 2008. The projected award date is September, 01, 2008 with the project estimated to end on August 31, 2010. For more information, on (HRSA-08-058), go to www.grants.gov or contact Elizabeth Rezai-zadeh, (301) 443-4107.
