The  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Monday that it is  accepting applications for a program designed to help healthcare professionals  drive improvements to patient care and reduce healthcare costs.  
  CMS  administrator Don Berwick, M.D., was on hand to kick-off the $6 million  program, which will recruit up to 200 innovation advisors "with the  knowledge and the vision to find innovative ways to improve care and reduce  costs for beneficiaries in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health  Insurance Program." The CMS Innovation Center will manage the program. 
  Innovation  advisors, who will be selected on a local and regional level, will include what  Berwick calls "healthcare system insiders capable of managing  change." That includes clinicians, allied health professionals, health  administrators, physicians and nurses. Skill sets will include healthcare  economics and finance; population health, systems analysis, and operations  research. 
  The  deadline for applications is Nov. 15; participants will be selected by Dec. 15.  An initial group of 50 innovation advisors will be selected to gather in  Washington, D.C in January 2012 to begin six months of orientation and  training. A second group of 150 advisors will begin orientation by mid-2012.  Training will include in-person national and regional meetings, virtual  training sessions, seminars and presentations by healthcare experts.  
  One  of the goals is for each participant to take what they learn during training  and apply it to their home organizations and areas, explained Joe McCannon,  senior advisor to Dr. Berwick. Innovation advisors will be expected to develop  and implement a hands-on systems improvement project. 
  Each  innovation advisor will receive a stipend of about $20,000 to help cover the  cost of transportation, lodging and other expenses. During the six-month  training program each participant will be expected to set aside 10 hours per  week to study the curriculum and to implement their individual systems  improvement project. The entire program will last about one year. 
  A  CMS spokesperson explained that the program's success will be measured in a  couple of ways - successful completion of individual improvement projects by each  innovation advisor and the level of support for testing new models of  healthcare care delivery. 
 |