First Round of Health Care Innovation Awards Announced
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the first round of recipients of the Health Care Innovation Awards on May 8.
The Health Care Innovation Challenge, launched last November, was designed to generate creative approaches to health care delivery that improve health, enhance health care, and lower costs for individuals enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.
The 26 awarded projects total $122.6 million, approximately 10 percent of the $1 billion in grant funding to be administered through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI).
The recipient programs span a wide range of topics, including interventions to:
- improve chronic disease management for underserved populations,
- enhance primary care outcomes through the use of community health workers,
- reduce emergency care admissions, and
- lower re-hospitalization rates.
The 26 awardees were selected based on their unique approaches to addressing health care challenges, as well as their integration of workforce development and cost savings benefits for local communities.
In a call with stakeholders the day that the grants were announced, CMMI Director Richard J. Gilfillan said that the next round of awards will be announced in early June. Gilfillan would not confirm whether the second round would feature a similar number of awardees, or whether there will be a third round of funding.
The awards were originally scheduled to be announced in March, but CMS delayed the announcement in order to more thoroughly consider the 3,000-plus applications submitted at the start of the year.
– by Angelina Del Rio Drake, PHI Development Writer
