The HIT Transition Weblog

July Grant Roundup

Washington State: $250,000 to Pilot HIE

Arizona: $685,000 in Rural e-Health Grants

Louisiana: Millions More for Electronic Medical Records

Vendor Grants $50,000 to Physicians for EMR in Florida

New Federal HIT Grants to be Announced

Directory of Biomedical and Healthcare Grants

The Health IT Grant Resource Directory

Grant Roundup for June, 2008

Health Care Foundations Unveil $4.5 Million Program

Lawmakers Push for Passage of Health Care IT Legislation

Microsoft Awards $4.5M in Grants to 15 HealthVault Projects

Hospital Tax Breaks Smacked in Health Reform Hearing

Pittsburgh Insurer To Provide $29M To Help Physicians Adopt IT

Washington Health Information Technology Grants

Highmark Moves On HIT Funding for Physicians

HHS Chooses Areas Where Doctors Get Paid for Using EHRs

Health Plan Gets Prestigious Grant To Evaluate Physician Incentives

HHS: Grants for Public Health Preparedness

AHRQ Health Information Technology Programs Update

$1.3 Million to Improve Medical Device Use & HIT

Grants Roundup for March 2008

$25 Million Gift Seeks Match from Physicians, Includes Bleeding Edge IT

CDC Awards $38 Million to RHIOs

$150,000 for EMR/Cardiac Pilot Project

AHRQ Awards Millions for Clinical Decision Support Systems

Community Foundation Grants Hit Record, Health Tech-Heavy

FCC Grants to Expand Telemedicine in the Rural West

Vermont: Tax Health Plans to Pay for Health Tech?

Delta Dental Awards $50,000 to Prove Digital Expands Access

Practices Can Win $290,000 in Medicare Bonuses through EMR Adoption

Grants Roundup

HHS Awards Grant to Secure Health Information Technology

Independent Sector Urges Senate Finance Committee to Include Nonprofits in Stimulus Package

$1.2 Million for eMAR for Aging Patients

Idaho RHIO To Get $500,000 from State, $11.3 Million from Providers

CDC Grant Opportunity Requires EMRs

AT&T Awards HIT Grantto Local Volunteers in Medicine Group

State HIT Grants in Virginia

PacificCare Gives $700,000 for Safety Net HIE

Opportunity: New Federal Rural HIT Grants

The Old Rural Healthcare Bond Refinancing Ploy

Grant Roundup for 12/05/07

"Disruptive Innovations" Entrants Invited to Apply for Grants
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is looking for ways to shake up healthcare, and they may have found some. Among the projects invited to compete for funding:

• Project ECHO: Knowledge Networks for the Treatment of Complex Diseases in Remote, Rural, Underserved Communities - University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
• Instant Birth Control - Planned Parenthood of the Columbia Willamette
• Develop a universal technology framework for registries focused on capturing outcomes data for cardiovascular disease -- American College of Cardiology
• Clinical Research Information Exchange - CRIX International
• Health Futures Markets - New York University
• The EpiSurveyor Project: Lowering the Barriers and Raising the Bar for Data Collection - The Datadyne Group
• Space age medical care for use on Earth - Henry Ford Hospital
• Rethinking What a Health Insurance Package Can Be - Working Today-Freelancers Union

Colorado Trust Awards $3.9 Million: Some Room for CDSS, eMAR?
Grants totaling $3.9 million to help strengthen patient care and safety in hospitals around the state. Supports the Five Million Lives Campaign, an initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) intended to build safeguards against hospital-acquired infections, ADEs, surgical errors and other complications of patient care.

Center for Community Health Leadership: $3 Million Grant for Connected Healthcare
Organization sponsored by Misys Healthcare Systems commits $3 million to the 3 million-population Tampa Bay area.

North Dakota Woman Has A Global Impact
This busy lady was over and above her fair share with her work for rural clinics and working with public safety groups. But then the Navajo nation wanted to track diabetes using PDA/blackberry technology...

Your Grant Dollars At Work: Rochester RHIO Goes Live
The upstate New York RHIO, funded by a $4.4 million state grant and $2 million from local businesses, has started training 20 participating physician office's staff members. Cork the Champagne!

Grant Roundup for November 20

$400 in Grants from FCC for Health Networks
Now that's a government putting its money where its spin usually is. A large majority of the 80 organizations who applied are receiving funding. Examples: the Cabarrus Health Alliance gets $6 million; Copper Queen hospital gets $183,000.

Near Space Technology Brings Healthcare To Navajo Nation
Satellite technology to monitor diabetes funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant program.

Local Philanthropy Funds Health IT
Grocery magnate Hannaford Charitable Foundation gives $25,000 to Saratoga Hospital in its campaign for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE).

First Health IT Grant Resource Directory Developed
The "HIT GRD" serves RHIOs, HIEs, hospitals, clinics, rural healthcare and HIT software vendors with information on private funding prospects for RHIO and health IT.

Wealth Transfer To Benefit Illinois Communities
We've been explaining the U.S. intergenerational wealth transfer for years now: Over the coming few decades, many trillions of dollars will pass from the largest generation ever to walk the earth to its heirs and favorite charities (we estimate nonprofit healthcare's slice to be upwards of $2 trillion -- with a T). And we're not alone; communities are catching on...

Resource: Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care
Some of the facts and figues for creating the HIT support case.

New Money for Health IT

Mention the word “grant” to almost anybody in healthcare, and they immediately think “federal.” And that’s odd, because the U.S. federal government is responsible for less than 20% of the grant dollars given annually to U.S. nonprofit organizations.

We know (because Mike Leavitt recently reminded us) that unlike nearly everywhere else in the world, American government doesn’t pay for health IT. So why are we still standing here like a row of prairie dogs waiting for peanuts? It’s time to start thinking differently, and start looking to the country’s 50,000 private foundations, Community Foundations and corporate giving programs for money for health IT.

Rather than just repeating that exhortation incessantly to everyone who will listen, we have been doing some of the footwork. Through a two-year research project involving more tedious reading and databasing than I care to remember, we’ve compiled a list of just over 4,000 prospective funders of health IT. And not one of them is the federal government. Read on...

Acute and Obtuse: Angles on Health IT Funding

Part 2 in a series on health IT funding.
See the other installments in the Grants and Funding category.

You’re a software vendor and willing to throw some effort behind getting your customer’s HIT/telemedicine/clinical technology project funded, but you’ve got exactly zero experience in grant research and grantwriting. Or you’re a hospital IT director frustrated over tight resources – barely enough to keep the lights on – and you’ve got no visibility into the institution’s fundraising operation. Maybe you’re the CIO with the same feelings.

There’s money out there for health IT. The entire U.S. nonprofit sector – an annual $1.4 trillion chunk of the economy – collects only about $70 billion from government, and over $460 billion from private sources...

Rainmakers for Health IT and RHIO

Had a couple calls this week from IT vendors about our RHIO finance report (http://rhio.hittransition.com). Interesting calls. Both wanted to know how to get more involved in their customers' affairs to try to get them off high center and out pounding the pavement for funding. Seems they've been working with RHIOs for over a year now and still haven't seen a check.

"What's it gonna take to move this needle?" was the frustrated question from one. She's with a big software company and not used to sitting on her sales cycle quite so long. The RHIO "hasn't pulled in any funding since the initial grant and now they're running on fumes."

I asked both callers if they themselves had provided any funding. "No, but we haven't been asked" was the approximate reply from both.

The Wal-Mart Effect on Healthcare

Once again, the Mr. HISTalk site has me thinking.  This time, it's a reader's forum post on the possible impacts of Wal-Mart's entrance into the health care delivery market.  A fellow calling himself Art Vandelay lays out some pretty thoughtful possibilities.  His narrative investigates every aisle of inquiry, from the push toward transparency in pricing and wait times to the impact a nationwide, HIT-enabled provider network could have on road warriors strapped with high deductibles and a runny nose.

As a neighbor (the Behemoth of Bentonville is a short drive from Tulsa, close enough that we can hear it breathing at night), I've long been intrigued by the Wal-Mart Effect and the impact it might have on US healthcare.  Not just as an entity, but as a model of monopsony: The dominant influence that a single purchaser (oops -- I almost said "single payer") can have on a market.

Health IT Fundraising Performance

Part 1 of a series on HIT fundraising
See the other installments in the Grants and Funding category.

NOTE: Michael is presenting a webinar, “The Grant Search for Health IT – Resources and Techniques,” on October 2 and 3.

A Brief Intro: Health IT funding topics have become the most-viewed content in our webspace at hittransition.com. We are offering this series to meet a growing demand for “fundraising moxie” among IT administrators. We will proceed as if your institution’s development department or operating foundation has abandoned you or doesn’t exist (maybe you’re a small rural operation), and you’ve got to do it all on your lonesome. Naturally, if we can get cabinet folk onboard, the hospital’s fundraising staff will take over a large part of this work. In any case, you will benefit immensely by knowing the principles involved and where you fit in. This will be a straight-shooting series, no holds barred. When we can point you directly to where the bodies are buried we intend to do just that. So I feel like I need to toss this out right now: Please don’t be offended at my unapologetic use of every tool at my disposal to unearth cash. We speak plainly around here, and this delicate topic will be no exception.

Rubber Medicare Checks Help Bounce Rural Hospitals Into Chapter 11

In a recent story we published in our HITSync newsletter, we pointed out that Medicare, in order to make its books look better, was delaying payment for the last nine days of FY2006.  CMS, without a hint of irony, explained that delaying this immense financial obligation was taken under the auspices of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

Rural healthcare providers, many of whom operate on extremely tight margins, do not have the luxury of handing out IOUs for services already rendered, or engaging in spending binges to be paid off by future generations.  In fact, back in aught-three (HIPAA Round 1) we argued for parallel processing of legacy and standard claims, in part to insure that the HIPAA mandate did not drive such providers out of business.

RHIO Finance Whitepaper Released

UPDATE March 29, 2007: The 2007 RHIO finance survey has been opened to respondents. Visit http://hittransition.com/rhio2007 for information and to take the survey.

UPDATE June 21, 2006: We released a new 50-page report on RHIO Finance, available at http://hittransition.com/RHIO_Survey_2006.

When a new species of organization evolves, there are sure to be a lot of different ideas and downright confusion about how they should be built. At a recent conference called to jumpstart planning for a new state RHIO, I heard that favorite cliche, "If you've seen one RHIO, you've seen one RHIO" at least half a dozen times from the dais alone. Well, I'm here to tell you, nonprofit organizations, for all their idiocyncracies, are a lot alike in some critical ways, and you're headed for trouble if you don't get them right. The argument over how RHIOs should be funded was treated by several speakers, including Scott Wallace, President and CEO of The National Alliance for Health Information Technology (NAHIT) and Chair of the Commission on Systemic Interoperability. I thought it was time to address one piece of the finance question head on.

Healthcare IT Transition Group has just released a new whitepaper entitled "The Integrated Path - Incorporating Contributed Revenue in the RHIO Finance Mix: Not Whether but How," available as a free download at

Bucks for Rural Provider IT

This innovative, cost-saving approach developed by healthcare providers in North Dakota and Montana is worth a look:

Joint IT purchase saves millions for rural hospital consortium from HealthLeaders News.

I've long advocated that HIT can, perhaps, be of most benefit to the "diverse and dispersed" providers that often have the least opportunity to invest in it.  Here is a case where one small hospital executive took matters into his own hands and saved his company -- and those he partnered with -- millions, while installing a more advanced system than he could have done on his own.

NOTE: I've added the category "Rural Healthcare," and will continue to post on this critical but underserved topic in the weeks and months ahead.