Late Tuesday, CMS released a call for participation in the new Independence at Home Demonstration through the Affordable Cara Act. This new Demonstration will provide chronically ill patients with a complete range of primary care services by partnering with medical practices to develop effective models. The goal is to develop in-home care for Medicare patients that is both comprehensive and cost effective. Health care providers will be rewarded for their efforts if their programs prove to provide high-quality care while reducing costs.

To be eligible to participate in the Demonstration, medical practices must include physicians or nurse practitioners who have experience delivering home-based primary care and serve at least 200 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions and functional limitations. No more than 50 practices will be selected to participate; applications are due February 6, 2012.

Click here to read more about the new Independence at Home Demonstration and to learn how to apply.

Last week, Congress passed the FY 2012 Omnibus Appropriations Act, a bill that will fund the Health Centers Program to not only maintain current federal grant support for ALL existing Health Centers, it will also provide enough additional funding to extend access to care to nearly 1.5 million additional people in need of care. In the simplest of terms, the Health Centers Program will receive a nearly $200 million increase to grow and expand care to those most in need.

This legislation would allow HHS to fund applications from among the more than 1,800 pending at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for new and expanded health centers.

To read the full statement from NACHC President and CEO, Tom Van Coverden, visit the NACHC website.

On December 19th, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that thirty-two leading health care organizations from across the country will participate in the Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACOs) Model. The Pioneer ACO Model will encourage primary care doctors, specialists, hospitals and other caregivers to provide better, more coordinated care for people with Medicare and could save up to $1.1 billion over five years.

The Pioneer ACO Model will test the effectiveness of several innovative payment models and how they can help experienced organizations to provide better care for beneficiaries, work in coordination with private payers, and reduce Medicare cost growth.  The Pioneer ACO Model also requires ACOs to engage other payers in similar efforts to reward health care providers that deliver high-quality care.

Selected Pioneer ACOs represent 18 States and have the opportunity to improve care for about 860,000 Medicare beneficiaries. For a list of providers, click here. 

Today HRSA announced  new grants for school-based health centers, made possible through the Affordable Care Act.  The $14M in awards announced today will allow 45 school-based health centers to improve their facilities and expand their services to provide care to an additional 53,000 children.

Read the full announcement here.