CMS through the Innovation Center on November 14, 2011, announced their “Health Care Innovation Challenge” (CMS-1C1-12-001) with awards up to one billion to be made through cooperative agreements. CMS is looking for the most compelling new service delivery and payment models to drive system transformation and deliver better outcomes for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP beneficiaries.
The aims of the initiatives are to:
• Produce better, care, better health, and reduced costs for high cost/high-risk groups. These groups include populations with multiple chronic diseases and/or mental health or substance abuse issues, poor health status due to socio-economic and environmental factors, multiple medical conditions, high-cost individuals, or the frail elderly.
• Identify new models of workforce development and related training and education to support new models either directly or through new infrastructure activities. Currently, reimbursement payment policies do not necessarily support all workforce needs but there are care coordination models that may be able to use less expensive but potentially highly effective individuals who are trained to interact with patients in a focused way
• Support innovators who can rapidly deploy care improvement models (within six months of the award) through new ventures or expand existing efforts to new populations of patients, in conjunction where possible with other public and private sector partners.
It is recognized that new types of infrastructure activity are needed to support more effective and efficient system-wide functions and to rapidly diffuse best practices. Infrastructure support might include the development of new registries, support the coordination of care in communities, develop preventive care models, telemedicine and remote monitoring models, medication reconciliation systems, shared-decision making systems, and innovation networks or community partnerships.
Eligible applicants and potential partners can include provider groups, health system payers and private sector organizations, faith-based, local government, public-private partnerships, and for- profit organizations.
Individual awards will range from approximately $1 million to $30 million for a three year period. A letter of intent is due December 19, 2011 with the application due January 27, 2012. To view the funding announcement, go to www.innovations.cms.gov or email InnovationChallenge@cms.hhs.gov for more information.
