Monday, February 16, 2009

Massachusetts Awards Grant

Massachusetts has awarded $32.6 million in FY 09 grants and increased rate payments from the state’s Essential Community Provider Trust Fund to 69 hospitals and community health centers across the Commonwealth. The funding includes $17.4 million in grants and an estimated $15.2 million in increased rate payments.

The goal of the Trust Fund is to help providers serve populations in need of more effective and efficient community-based care, clinical support, disease management, primary care, care coordination, and pharmacy management services. Eighty two providers across the state submitted applications for funding of $110 million.

In reviewing grant applications, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services not only evaluated financial needs and the role that each provider plays in the Commonwealth’s health delivery system, also emphasized the importance of maintaining or expanding behavioral health services, and the development of health centers as “medical homes”.

Some of the grant recipients include Caritas Carney Hospital ($4,000,000), East Boston Neighborhood Health Center ($1,500,000), Tufts Medical Center ($1,000,000), Quincy Medical Center ($2,000,000), Lawrence General Hospital ($1,000,000), Brockton Hospital ($1,200,000), Holyoke Medical Center ($2,100,000), Mercy Medical Center, Sisters of Providence ($7,000,000), and North Adams Regional Hospital ($1,000,000).