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2006 Award Process

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2006 Award Process

WHIC provided $1 million in 2006 for the acquisition, implementation and expansion of health information technology by health care providers. In 2006, this funding came from two $500,000 contributions from First Choice Health and the Washington State Health Care Authority. Also participating are Qualis Health and the Puget Sound Health Alliance. More about WHIC.

Scroll down to see a chronicle of the process used to select recipients for the WHIC funding for 2006.

WHIC congratulates award recipients for 2006!

List of Recipients

Recipient Locations

Green dot = funded by WA State Health Care Authority (2006)

Dark blue dot = funded by FCH (2006)

Light blue dot = funded by FCH (2005)

The awards to smaller primary care practices and critical access hospitals will fund partial costs of acquisition and expansion of health information technology (health IT) systems.  Funding is also being provided for community-wide connectivity projects and for development of systems that facilitate patient access to their health information.  Specifically, funding will be awarded for projects that address the following:

• Initial practice or facility health IT acquisition and implementation support (e.g., technology, infrastructure, consulting, workflow redesign)
• Increased functionality of health IT already in operation:
• Purchase and/or implementation of additional modules (including decision support tools, computerized physician order entry, clinician feedback mechanisms, and chronic disease registry functions)
• Data analysis and reporting capabilities
• Connectivity efforts in a given community (e.g., infrastructure upgrades, primary care/hospital data integration/interfacing, ancillary communications)
• Expanded patient access to their own medical information (personal health record features) and increased patient engagement in their care.  
  

During the week of September 11-15, 2006, the applicants were notified of their status by letter and e-mail.  Based on the review process, applicants were either offered immediate funding, placed into a contingency pool to receive funding (should those applicants offered immediate funding not be able to accept their award for any reason), or advised that their application will not receive funding in this award cycle. In addition, all applicants offered immediate funding were contacted directly by representatives of either First Choice or the Health Care Authority.

Applications were due July 27, 2006, and only accepted from those who had submitted a successful Letter of Intent, which was due June 16, 2006. Over one hundred and twenty five Letters of Intent were received by the due date, then reviewed by the Collaborative. Replies were sent during the week of June 26th, in two waves (on June 26th and June 30th), and copies of the initial replies have been resent upon request.

More than 90% of those who submitted a Letter of Intent were mailed a hard-copy application, either for implementation or for enhancement of an existing system. All others who submitted a Letter of Intent were sent notification explaining why they would not receive an application.  Only those who submitted a Letter of Intent and were sent a positive response from the Collaborative were allowed to submit an application for funding.  Applications for funding were due on July 27, 2006.

Questions? Please contact us by email.