The State of New Jersey has released a Request for Applications seeking innovative health information exchange projects. The State through the NJ Health Information Technology Commission and the Office of e-HIT in the Department of Banking and Insurance is currently assembling a State plan for HIT.
The state is looking for projects in the state that hold the promise for establishing a more effective efficient, sustainable, and interoperable exchange of clinically useful data across healthcare provider organizations, cities, and regions.
HHS has made available $564 million to the states for HIEs with each state receiving between $4 and $40 million based on a formula that has yet to be fully released. The state will receive the funding from the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT with information on the funding to be announced on or about December 15, 2009.
A sizable portion of that funding will go to local and regional health information exchanges to promote the exchanges. Once these exchanges are established, the state is going to integrate them with other sources of healthcare data into a secure, statewide health information exchange.
Sustainability has been a major challenge for regional HIEs nationwide. When submitting an application, a detailed and viable plan for financial and operational sustainability for the grant period and beyond that period of time is required. Revenue sources need to be included for future annual costs for hardware, software, licenses, and staff support. The state understands that not all exchange projects will be fully self-sustaining beyond the life of the grants from ONC.
The Request for Applications must be submitted to the State by September 25th. At that point, the Request for Applications received will possibly be incorporated into the state’s application for funding to be submitted to HHS due on October 16th.
For more information, go to http://nj.gov/recovery/grant or contact the State of NJ Department of Health and Senior Services at 609-984-7160.
