HHS just announced that $100 million in federal grants will go to ten states to improve healthcare quality and delivery systems for children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
The grants to be awarded over a five year period were funded by the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009. The funding will help states implement and evaluate provider performance measures and use health information technologies such as pediatric electronic health records and other quality improvement initiatives.
Eight of the ten grantees will test a new set of child health quality measures and seven of the ten states will use the funds to implement HIT strategies with two states specifically planning to develop a new pediatric electronic health record format.
Awardees represent both single state projects and multistate collaborations. Grantees working in multistate partnerships will share award funds with their partners. The states include Maine partnering with Vermont, Oregon partnering with Alaska, and West Virginia, Florida partnering with Illinois, Colorado partnering with New Mexico, Utah partnering with Idaho, and Maryland partnering with Georgia, and Wyoming. Single state projects were awarded to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and South Carolina.
