To advance APA’s priorities of integrated health care and workforce development, we would like to call your attention to the new Health Care Innovation Challenge, which was recently announced by the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.  This major initiative will award up to $1 billion in grants to applicants who will implement the most compelling new models to deliver “better health, improved care, and lower costs to people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP [Children’s Health Insurance Program], particularly those with the highest health care needs.”  Applicants are encouraged to include new models of workforce development and deployment that efficiently support their service delivery model proposal, along with enhanced infrastructure to support more cost-effective, system-wide functioning. Individual grant awards will range from approximately $1 million to $30 million for a three-year period.  Funding will be directed to innovators who can deploy care improvement models within six months of the grant award through new or expanded efforts to serve new populations of patients, in conjunction (where possible) with other public and private sector partners.  Applications are open to providers, payers, local government, public-private partnerships, and multi-payer collaboratives.  Each project will be monitored for measurable improvements in quality of care and savings generated.

Potential applicants must submit a letter of intent by December 19, 2011, with applications due by January 27, 2012.  The anticipated award date is March 30, 2012.

To learn more about the Health Care Innovation Challenge and information about the application process, please read the Funding Opportunity Announcement. 

To read an overview of the Health Care Innovation Challenge, including important deadlines, please read the
 Fact Sheet (PDF).

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has announced 2 new programs that are of interest.



The Medicare Shared Savings Program will provide incentives for participating health care providers who agree to work together and become accountable for coordinating care for patients.  Providers who band together through this model and who meet certain quality standards based upon, among other measures, patient outcomes and care coordination among the provider team, may share in savings they achieve for the Medicare program.  The higher the quality of care providers deliver, the more shared savings the providers may keep.

The Advance Payment model will provide additional support to physician-owned and rural providers participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program who also would benefit from additional start-up resources to build the necessary infrastructure, such as new staff or information technology systems.  The advanced payments would be recovered from any future shared savings achieved by the Accountable Care Organization.
                                                       For more information click here and here.