Two Additional Beacon Awards Totaling $30.3 Million
In early May, the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) at HHS announced awards of $220 million to 15 Beacon Communities across the nation to demonstrate a future where hospitals, clinicians, and patients use health IT in different ways to reform health care delivery within their communities and achieve meaningful and measurable improvements in health care quality, safety, and efficiency to benefit patients and taxpayers.
Today, we are pleased to announce (Word document) a new round of two additional Beacon awards totaling $30.3 million. To view the new Beacon funding opportunity, please visit http://healthit.hhs.gov/beacon.
Aaron McKethan
Program Director
Beacon Community Program, ONC
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Opportunity Overview
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
Funding Opportunity Title: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Funding to Beacon Communities
Announcement Type: New Competitive Program
Funding Opportunity Number: HHS-2010-ONC-BC-006
Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number: 93.727
Key Dates and Submission Information: Applicants are required to submit a Letter of Intent to apply for this funding opportunity. Applicants will be required to submit an application that will undergo screening for completeness and responsiveness. Applications that pass this initial screening will then be evaluated through an objective review process. Successful applications will result in the award of approximately two 31-month cooperative agreements. Award decisions for Beacon Communities are anticipated to be made in mid August 2010.
| Approx Funding | FOA Released | Letters of Intent Due | Applications Due | Cooperative Agreements Awarded | Anticipated Start Date |
| $30.375 million | May 26, 2010 | June 9, 2010 11:59 PM EST | June 28, 2010 5:00 PM EST | August 2010 | August 13, 2010 |
Note: Applicants are requested to pay close attention to the details of the application submission process outlined in Section IV (“Application and Submission Information”) of this document. The application submission process itself involves several steps. Previous experience suggests that applicants should take time to understand the process well in advance of when the applications are actually due to reduce the likelihood of experiencing difficulties during the submission process.
Executive Summary
The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program will provide funding to communities to build and strengthen their health information technology (health IT) infrastructure and exchange capabilities to demonstrate the vision of the future where hospitals, clinicians and patients are meaningful users of health IT, and together the community achieves measurable improvements in health care quality, safety, efficiency, and population health. Awards will be made in the form of cooperative agreements to approximately two qualified non-profit organizations or government entities representing geographic health care communities. Selected communities must already be national leaders in the advancement of health IT, workflow redesign and care coordination, or quality monitoring and feedback. In addition, successful communities must have advanced rates of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and health information exchange (HIE), and the readiness to incorporate health IT to advance community-level care coordination and quality monitoring and feedback. Cooperative agreement recipients will evolve and advance their existing competencies in these three areas over a 31-month performance period. Individually and in aggregate, the Beacon Communities will generate and disseminate valuable lessons learned that will be applicable to the rest of the nation’s communities as they strive to build and leverage their health IT infrastructure for healthcare improvement. Total funding for this funding opportunity announcement is $30,375,000.
