Grants and Demonstrations
The ACA provides funding opportunities to transform how health care is delivered, expand access to care and support healthcare workforce training.
Grant Announcements
9/27/11 CMS announced a funding initiative through the Innovation Center under §3021 of the ACA. The Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative is a new CMS-led, multi-payer initiative fostering collaboration between public and private health care payers to strengthen primary care for all Americans. Under the new initiative, Medicare will work with commercial and state health insurance plans to offer additional support to primary care doctors who better coordinate care for their patients. This collaboration is modeled after innovative practices developed by large employers and leading private health insurers in the private sector. On behalf of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries, the Innovation Center will pay an additional care management payment to participating practices in addition to traditional fee-for-service payments. Eligible payers may be commercial insurers, Medicare Advantage plans, states (through the Medicaid program), Medicaid managed care plans, state or federal high risk pools, self-insured businesses or administrators of a self-insured group. Payers must indicate their interest to CMS, including the level and type of support for primary care practices being offered. CMS is seeking to collaborate with other payers in five to seven markets with approximately 75 practices in each market, and serve up to 330,750 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries over the course of this four-year initiative. Letters of intent are due by November 15, 2011.
Read more at: Innovations
Read the Federal Register Notice at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-10-03/pdf/2011-25356.pdf
Read the press release at: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/09/20110928a.html
Grant Activity
9/29/11 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded $6.2 million to DPH under §4306 of the ACA to combat childhood obesity. The award will support a four year childhood obesity demonstration project to determine whether an integrated model of primary care and public health approaches in the community can improve underserved children's risk factors for obesity. Funds will also be used for research and evaluation to generate recommendations.
Read the grant narrative award at: MassGov
News
9/13/11 IRS/Treasury issued Notice 2011-73 seeking comments on a proposed affordability safe harbor for employers under the ACA shared responsibility provisions that will apply to certain employers starting in 2014. IRS/Treasury expect to propose a safe harbor permitting employers that offer coverage to their employees to measure the affordability of that coverage by using wages that the employer paid to an employee, instead of the employee's household income. The safe harbor would only apply for purposes of the employer shared responsibility provision, and would not affect employees' eligibility for health insurance premium tax credits.
Comments are due December 13, 2011.
Read the notice at: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-11-73.pdf
Upcoming Events
Next Quarterly Stakeholder Meeting
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Implementation meeting
Monday October 17, 2011, 11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M.
1 Ashburton Place, 21st floor, Boston
Open Meeting
Integrating Medicare and Medicaid for Dual Eligible Individuals
October 11, 2011, 10am- 12 pm
State Transportation Building
Conference Rooms 2 & 3, Second Floor
10 Park Plaza
Boston, MA
