On April 14, 2008, HRSA announced that a new competition (HRSA-08-124) will fund $10,000,000 for twelve awards to implement high impact HIT for Health Center Controlled Networks and Large Multi-Site Health Centers. The funding will support sustainable business models to deploy HIT in HCCNs as well as help health centers form strategic partnerships for other HIT initiatives and to participate in pay-for-performance programs. The closing date for applications is May 30, 2008.
There are several categories announced in the competition. The “Electronic Health Record Implementations” category will use the funding to implement EHRs in health center networks or in large multi-site health centers that have a need for an EHR.
The second category called “Innovative HIT Implementations” has two sub-categories. (Sub-Category 1) referred to as Early HIT Implementation” will provide funding ($150,000) for HCCNs or large multi-site health centers that do not currently have an HIT system in place but want to work in HIT but are not ready to move into EHR. This category will fund up to two organizations to implement the early stages of HIT adoption but is not limited to e-prescribing, disease registries, physician order entry, bar coding, using PDAs, and clinical messaging.
The “Advanced HIT Implementation” (Sub Category 2) will fund $555,000 for up to five organizations to implement advanced HIT innovations to build upon previous investments in HIT. The funding is not limited to community health records, personal health records, health information exchanges, smart cards, and integrating electronic oral health records into existing electronic health records. The funding can also be used to create interoperability with outside partners horizontally or vertically. Applicants may propose projects that build upon or enhance existing HIT systems that would create interoperable information systems to provide for telehealth.
Cost sharing and matching are not required. However, applicants are encouraged to demonstrate cost participation to show community and organization support. It is also necessary to indicate how the project will continue after Federal grants support has ended.
HRSA’s Office of Health Information Technology will oversee the projects. A pre-application conference call for potential applicants will be held at 2 pm ET on May 5, 2008. The call in number is 888-469-1929 and the pass code is HRSA. For more information, go to www.grants.gov.
