Health Care Innovation Challenge - $1 Billion Available!

$1 billion dollars will be awarded to innovative projects that can deliver high quality health care and better outcomes at a lower costs to people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP (Child Health Insurance Program)

Funded by the Affordable Care Act, the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center will award funds to test alternative models for care delivery and payment, facilitate learning, diffuse best practices, and promote the development of a workforce capable of supporting care transformation.  The awards will be conducted in 2 rounds, the first round of awards will be announced in March 2012.  The awards will range from $1 million to $30 million for a three-year period.  

Projects will be evaluated based on the following priorities:

• Ability to rapidly hire, train and deploy new types of health care workers and the ability to create the workforce of the future
• Ability to begin within six months of award and demonstrate a model of sustainability post-award
• Projects or care model for the high risk, chronic, complex and high needs population
• Enhanced or new types of infrastructure to enable others to learn, support and diffuse best practices

Interested parties of all types, provider groups, health systems, payers, private organizations, faith-based organizations, local governments, public-private partnerships, and certain conveners are eligible to apply.  States, manufacturers and software developers are not eligible.

If you are interested, you start the process with submitting a letter of intent on Dec 19, 2011, the application on January 27, 2012 for the first round of award on March 30, 2012.  Applicants must obtain a DUNS number and register in the Central Contractor.  All applications information can be found at the Innovation Center and must be submitted electronically through www.grants.gov