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HHS Grants Fund Health IT in Communities
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What do a project to streamline a loan-repayment program, an in-hospital program to improve care for surgical patients, and an initiative to reduce infant mortality have in common? They’re all winners of the HHS 2015 Innovation Awards, announced June 24.
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The program, now in its eighth year, challenges HHS employees to come up with innovative solutions to problems in health, health care, and government. Entries can address topics such as affordability, access, system enhancement, and return-on-investment for HHS resources. Innovations must have been implemented within the past 30 months and need to be potentially “scalable”—that is, relevant throughout HHS and beyond.
The 7 winners this year include a project to revamp the HHS Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA’s) National Health Service Corps and NURSE Corps Loan Repayment Programs, which were “disconnected” and “inefficient.” The HRSA’s Bureau of Health Workforce consolidated all processes and technical systems into a single system, simplifying applicant submission and review, reducing redundancies, and supporting the push to go paperless. In doing so, the project saved the government $2.4 million and is expected to generate a 17% return on investment by 2020.
The general surgery department at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, an IHS hospital, won with its Peri-Operative Surgical Home (POSH) project, which has “reorganized, reinvented, and repurposed disparate processes, equipment, staff, and time into a team-based, innovative program,” the designers say. The centerpiece of the program is the Assessment and Planning process, in which representatives from all POSH departments meet to plan care for complex surgical patients before, during, and after surgery. The multidisciplinary program has not only improved the patient experience, but also led to significant savings.
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A third project, the Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network (CoIIN) to Reduce Infant Mortality, created interstate “cyberteams” to exchange ideas and best practices and test new approaches. Using quality improvement principles from business and medicine, states with the highest rates of infant mortality were able to reduce infant mortality by 10% and more.
Fostering innovation, said HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell, empowers teams with the resources they need to address the challenges of today’s health care.