Two sets of new grants of federal funding under the health reform law have been announced over the past week. First, CMS’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced the second and final group of Health Care Innovation Awards on June 15, 2012. These 81 awards were granted to innovative projects designed to deliver high-quality medical care, enhance the health care workforce, and lower costs. Combined with the awards that CMMI announced in May, CMMI will fund a total of 107 projects located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, which intend to save the health care system an estimated $1.9 billion over the next three years. Awards range from approximately $1 million to $30 million for a three year period. Information on the award recipients is available on the CMS website.
Second, on June 18, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) announced 50 research funding awards under the PCORI Pilots Program, a program that supports methodologies and preliminary data collection that can be used to advance patient-centered outcomes research. The awards range from roughly $230,000 to $725,000 each, and total $30 million over two years. Descriptions of the projects awarded funding are available on the PCORI website.