Opportunity To Promote New Roles for OT: Tell Us If You Applied
Update: AOTA would like to know if any occupational therapy programs or individuals are involved in the recently announced Health Care Innovation Challenge. AOTA wants to track the involvement of occupational therapy in these innovative efforts. If you or your institution or setting has submitted a proposal that includes occupational therapy involvement, please e-mail any information that is available to FAD@aota.org. AOTA will keep the information confidential until grants are awarded at the end of March.
A new grant program has been announced that gives occupational therapy researchers and providers the opportunity to test new ways of using occupational therapy in a reformed health care system.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMI) has posted a “Health Care Innovation Challenge” asking for grant applications for awards ranging from approximately $1 million to $20 million for a 3-year period. Applications are open to providers, payers, local governments, public private partnerships, and multipayer collaboratives. Goals of these grants, which will be administered by the (CMI), are to engage a broad set of innovation partners, identify new models of workforce development and deployment, and support innovators who can rapidly deploy care improvement models (click here for full details).
“These grants could open doors for occupational therapy in many venues,” said Christina Metzler, AOTA Chief Public Affairs Officer. “AOTA’s Health Care Reform Ad Hoc Committee has been discussing ways to promote the profession’s potential, and here is real funding to make those ideas reality.” AOTA as an entity is not eligible for these grants, but universities collaborating with health care systems or provider systems themselves are.
“If you are researching a particular area that focuses on the goals of the CMI—promote better care coordination, especially for those with cognitive impairments; promote self-management; provide chronic care in the home; better address critical conditions such as autism and Alzheimer’s disease; and promote mechanisms such as telehealth—now is the time to share these ideas so that they may be incorporated into a reformed and re-ordered health care system,” Says Metzler.
CMI is focusing on populations that now have poor health care outcomes, whose care costs more than average, or who are not able to manage their health care. According to Metzler, “occupational therapy could be involved in many areas: pre-discharge evaluations for falls prevention and self-care ability, self-management training for those with diabetes, caregiver training to save costs and prevent institutionalization, and many other areas. These grants provide an opportunity to put occupational therapy in “high definition” to influence the development of new systems.”
The applications are due January 27, 2012, but a nonbinding letter of intent is due December 19. The letter of intent may be brief.
The CMI website has further details, including a slide show overview and a webinar recording.
