The New York Health Department is seeking grant applications from regional health information organizations for $105.75 million in grants to promote health IT through community collaborations, Government Technology reports.
The state health department through a competitive grant process will invest in projects that advance interoperability of health IT systems and include strong privacy protections that should increase patient safety and reduce medical errors, costs and duplicate tests. Grants also will be invested in health IT adoption collaborations, which are groups of ambulatory care clinicians and their affiliated providers, seeking to use electronic health records.
The Healthcare Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers, or HEAL NY, provides funding for the grants and was adopted in 2004 to invest up to $1 billion over four years for restructuring and reforming the state health delivery system. This is the fifth request for grants under the initiative, and this round seeks to build on the progress of $52.9 million in HEAL NY grants awarded in May 2006.
The goals of this fifth phase of grants are to lay a foundation for a health IT infrastructure and to ensure that quality initiatives requiring health IT tools result in increased accountability to assess patient outcomes and provider performance. The grants also aim to collect clinical data in a timely manner for reporting on health trends, clinical trials and other research (Government Technology, 9/25).