Governor Hassan Announces State of New Hampshire Wins $2 Million Federal Award for Innovation in Health Care

Press Release

Governor Maggie Hassan today announced that the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has won a $2 million Model Design Award from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) State Innovation Models initiative.

The award begins on February 1, 2015, and will be used over a 12-month period for HHS to work with providers and payers on a project to design a multi-payer health care payment and service delivery model that will improve health outcomes and decrease costs not only for Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program beneficiaries, but for all residents.

"Improving access to needed services, providing better health outcomes and reducing healthcare costs is critical to the health and economic well-being for all of our people and businesses," Governor Hassan said. "I applaud the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services for their hard work on the Model Design proposal, and I thank the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for awarding this important grant. I look forward to the department's work with providers, payers and other stakeholders to make innovations in our healthcare system that will help us move to the next level of integrating care across our communities and reducing the growth in costs across all of our healthcare systems."

The State Innovation Model (SIM) design grant will allow HHS to work with providers and payers to develop a structure for providers to access the tools they need to transform their practice in a rapidly changing healthcare system.

The SIM grant will be used for the development and use of Regional Healthcare Cooperative Extensions that will: champion healthcare systems engineering, bringing engineering techniques to improve efficiency to providers; expand the use of information technologies; and lead local population health improvement.

"This award is great news for people, providers and payers in New Hampshire, boosting our efforts to improve our health system performance and health outcomes and to lower costs for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and as a result, all of our people and businesses," HHS Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas said.

The State Innovation Models Initiative Model Design Award will help the State engage stakeholders to develop an innovative design plan to submit to CMS, building on efforts to improve and enhance New Hampshire's care delivery and payment systems, such as implementing the bipartisan health care expansion plan that the Governor signed earlier this year, strengthening community-based mental health care in the bipartisan budget, and implementing the Medicaid Care Management Program.

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