Healthcare Innovation Challenge Materials

The CMS Innovation Center's Health Care Innovation Challenge

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) hosted four webinars on its Health Care Innovation Challenge, which will spend a billion dollars through awards of up to $30 million over three years to projects that identify and test promising new payment and care delivery models for Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. I have synced the slides with the audio to make the webinar archive easier to view.

The objectives of this initiative are to:

• Engage a broad set of innovation partners to identify and test new care delivery and payment models that originate in the field and that produce better care, better health, and reduced cost through improvement for identified target populations. 
• Identify new models of workforce development and deployment and related training and education that support new models either directly or through new infrastructure activities. 
• Support innovators who can rapidly deploy care improvement models (within six months of award) through new ventures or expansion of existing efforts to new populations of patients, in conjunction (where possible) with other public and private sector partners.

You can view and listen to each of the webinars below. There are resources listed under that. I will also be updating this post with additional useful information for those who are applying for this opportunity. The expanding FAQ for this funding is available at innovations.cms.gov

CMS Innovation Center staff hosted the first is a series of informational webinar on
the Health Care Innovation Challenge for all interested individuals and organizations
on Thursday, November 17, 2011. Staff provided an overview of the initiative and
were available to answer questions from the audience.

This second webinar was held on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 to provide guidance on the application process with specific attention towards designing effective project proposals.

In this third of four-webinar series on the Innovation Challenge held December 19, 2011,
CMS Innovation Center staff presented an explanation of "Total Cost of Care" and how
potential applicants can demonstrate their path to achieving lower costs through improvement.

This fourth presentation was the final overview webinar on the Innovation Challenge
before applications are due. CMS Innovation Center staff presented how potential
innovative proposals can demonstrate measurable impact on the aims of better care
and better health in addition to considerations for operational planning for potential applications.

RESOURCES:

Public Sources for CMS or HHS Approved Quality Measures 

• HHS Measures Inventory http://www.qualitymeasures.ahrq.gov/hhs-measure-inventory/browse.aspx
• Medicaid and CHIP Programs; CHIPRA Core Set Technical Specifications Manual https://www.cms.gov/MedicaidCHIPQualPrac/Downloads/CHIPRACoreSetTechManual.pdf 
• Initial Core Set of Health Quality Measures for Medicaid-Eligible Adults http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-12-30/pdf/2010-32978.pdf 
• Medicare Health Outcomes Survey http://www.hosonline.org/Content/SurveyInstruments.aspx 
• Accountable Care Organizations –Measures used in the Shared Savings Program https://www.cms.gov/MLNProducts/downloads/ACO_Quality_Factsheet_ICN907407.pdf 
• Health Indicators Warehouse http://healthindicators.gov/ 
• Healthy People 2020 http://healthypeople.gov/2020/default.aspx
  
  Other Measure Sources 
• IOM Health Services Geographic Variation Data Sets http://www.iom.edu/Activities/HealthServices/GeographicVariation/Data-Resources.aspx 
• National Quality Forum http://www.qualityforum.org/Home.aspx 
• NCQA http://ncqa.org
• MATCH County Level Health Rankings http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/
  
  Other Resources:
• Demographic data from US Census: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml