CMS Grants Providers $122M to Improve Care, Cut Costs

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced grants worth $122.6 million to 26 health organizations around the country that have proposed ideas for improving care while saving money. The next round of funding, from a total pool of $900 million, will be announced in June.

"No one understands the limitations of our current healthcare system better than doctors and nurses," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a news briefing to announce the winners.

"They're the ones that see patients show up in the ER with a preventable asthma attack, or (who) lose control of their diabetes because they don't have help managing their blood sugar. They see the inefficiencies and misdirected incentives that drive up cost and get in the way of delivering the right care," she said.

But these providers have the "best ideas about how to make care work better" and the grants will enable the most promising among their ideas to be "taken off the shelf and put into action."

The projects are said to be capable of improving care for an estimated 750,000 people. At least $250 million, double the government's investment, would be saved by the last year of these three-year awards.