Tips For Getting Money To Fund Health IT ProjectsTips For Getting Money To Fund Health IT Projects

The government's HITECH stimulus programs promise to reward healthcare providers billions of dollars for the meaningful use of health IT. But those financial incentives don't begin kicking in till 2011. In the meantime, there are ways to get outside funding to help with your initial technology investment.The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allotted about $2 billion for the Office of National Coordinator of Health IT to divvy out for grants and other programs. But about $1 billion in this discretionary spending hasn't been awarded yet by ONC. So, now's the time to be thinking hard about whether your organization can get some assistance to fund you health IT projects, said Brian Dixon, a health IT project manager at Regenstrief Institute, which itself has over the years has received about $25 million in various grants and contracts related to health IT research and projects.

Dixon, a speaker today at a HIMSS educational session dubbed, "Getting Your Project Funded," offered up lots of great, practical tips for healthcare organizations to apply for grants to help pay for health IT initiatives.

Here are some of the best ones:

Scout out what money is available. While there's still money out there not yet spoken for related to ARRA, healthcare organizations need to check out what other U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services related grants are possible from its various units, such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, not to mention funding opportunities offered by other federal government departments, as well as states. For instance, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has in the past awarded broadband grants and loans to small hospitals in rural areas, he said.

Meanwhile, private organizations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other groups also offer grants and loans.

Searching on the web is one way to find out what kinds of programs are out there, but if your organization has a hospital librarian, recruit that person for help searching out funding opportunities, said Dixon.

"I love librarians," he said. "They come up with great query suggestions" and other advice to help narrow down funding opportunities, he said.

You can also hire a professional to scope out grants, but that requires a fee, he said.

During the application process, make sure you identify what will make your project unique or helpful to others in terms of the sort of insight you hope to glean from the work.

"How will your project contribute to the greater good?," is something you'll need to describe, he said. For instance, will your project use technology in a new way? Will the project address a specific population of patients, such as the chronically ill or users in a rural setting? There has to be some significance to the project so that others can digest and possibly benefit from the findings later, too, he said.

That brings us to another important thing to remember about getting external funding.

The grantor--especially if it's the federal government providing ARRA related money--will expect details, including plans on how you'll measure the outcome of your project, and how you'll disseminate those outcomes to others, whether it's a white paper, scholarly journal or other means, said Dixon.

"There are no free lunches," he warned.

"Integrity Check: 5 Steps To Data-Centric Cybersecurity" will help keep your organzation's data safe. Download the report here (registration required).