The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center intends to award $840 million in grants to test methodologies to improve clinical practices and care. CMS's Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI) grant program is directed to include the following eligible applicants: medical professional associations, specialty societies and organizations that are: 1) involved in generating evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice; 2) promoting measurement through clinical registries and electronic health records; and 3) effectively incorporating safety and patient and family engagement.
The TCPI grant program has two funding categories:
- Practice Transformation Networks are peer-based learning networks designed to coach, mentor and assist clinicians in developing core competencies specific to practice transformation. Typical applicants are those with pre-existing relationships with multiple clinician practices (primary care and/or specialists).
- Support and Alignment Networks involve workforce development systems that utilize national and regional professional associations and public-private partnerships engaged in practice transformation efforts, including continuing medical education, maintenance of certification and core competency development. Applicants include medical professional associations, specialty societies and organizations involved in generating evidence-based guidelines, reducing unnecessary testing and procedures, and incorporating safety and patient and family engagement.
The TCPI grant program aims to fund innovative approaches to making improvements in clinical practices that can be replicated in the broader health care provider community, improve health outcomes, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and overutilization, sustain efficient care delivery and generate savings over a period of four years through reduced Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP expenditures.
Types of activities CMS specifically noted to be funded include:
- Giving doctors better access to patient information, such as information on prescription drug use to help patients take their medications properly;
- Expanding the number of ways patients are able to communicate with the team of clinicians taking care of them;
- Improving the coordination of patient care by primary care providers, specialists and the broader medical community; and
- Using electronic health records on a daily basis to examine data on quality and efficiency.
Letters of intent (LOIs) are due by November 20, 2014 (LOIs are encouraged but not mandatory). Applications are due to CMS no later than January 6, 2015. CMS anticipates announcing awards in Spring/Summer 2015.
If you have any questions, please contact Sheila Burke, the Baker Donelson attorney with whom you regularly work, or any of the attorneys in the Firm's Health Law Group.