Burwell announces $28M in funding for HIE grants

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Speaking at the 2015 ONC Annual Meeting on Feb. 3, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced a $28 million funding opportunity to advance interoperability.

The two-year grant program will ask awardees to demonstrate innovative, community-based solutions to advance standardized, secure information exchange, Burwell said. “It’s important to remember the real reasons we’re doing this work. If we succeed in our efforts, it means patients admitted to a hospital or referred to a specialist will be more likely to get the right tests and medications because the doctors are doing a better job of coordinating with each other. Businesses will benefit as we continue to slow the growth in healthcare costs.”

According to a post on ONC’s blog authored by National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, and Ahmed E. Haque, director of ONC’s Office of Programs & Engagement, 10 to 12 awards will be made in the form of cooperative agreements to states, territories or state designated entities (SDE) to continue work under the same intent as the original State Health Information Exchange (HIE) Program.

“As part of the program, we seek to enable send, receive, find and use health information in a manner that is appropriate, secure, timely and reliable for both sender and receiver. A variety of use cases could fall into this definition including a long-term care provider’s ability to access lab results or radiological films after a patient was discharged from a hospital, as is the case in Colorado, or by linking the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Plan, as has been done in Maryland.”

During her talk at the meeting, Burwell said though there is much conflict in Washington, one area with near unanimous agreement is that the “healthcare system in place for the last 50 years has underdelivered. The prices we’ve paid have far outweighed the progress we’ve made.”

Everyone has a common interest, she said, in building "a healthcare system that is better, smarter and healthier—a system that delivers better care, spends healthcare dollars more wisely and makes our communities healthier.”