Patient Safety Grants for Hospitals, Healthcare Systems and Clinics
This year, the Cardinal Health Foundation will award $1 million in grant funds to support initiatives by healthcare institutions which provide direct patient care to enhance patient safety and quality of care. The Cardinal Health Foundation will issue grants up to $50,000 commensurate with the scope of the patient safety project.In 2007, the review committee awarded 34 grants averaging $30,000 per grant.Please submit online the organization’s patient safety grant letter of intent by Friday, October 31, 2008. Hard copy or email proposals will not be accepted. Letters of intent received after this deadline will not be considered.Visit the following link to submit the letter of intent in a PDF or Word document. Only these two formats will be accepted.
www.cardinalhealth.com/communityFollowing review of the letters of intent submitted under the Cardinal Health Patient Safety Grant Program, those selected by our external review committee, comprised of clinicians and clinical experts, will be invited to submit a full proposal. Invitations to select organizations will be extended on Monday, January 12, 2009 with a final proposal deadline of Friday, February 20, 2009. Grant awards will be announced in Spring 2009.
The primary criteria for the awarding of these grants will be that they address one of the National Quality Forum’s seven priority areas (www.qualityforum.org). The Foundation is especially interested in the following two areas in 2009:
Eliminating healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), specifically MRSA (methicillin-resistant 1. staphylococcus aureus) andC. difficile infection prevention and management; with the goal of taking ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), surgical site infections (SSI) and blood site infections (BSI) to zero.
Medication safety and reconciliation. These initiatives can range from prescribing correct medication to ensuring the right 2. medication gets to the right patient at the right time and assuring information is communicated and understood at key transition points. Use of technology is encouraged.
About AMDA Foundation/Evercare® AwardsImageIn 2008, the AMDA Foundation partnered with Evercare to create the AMDA Foundation/Evercare® Awards for “Improving the Quality of Life for Persons Living in Nursing Homes” awards program. The three awards were presented at the AMDA Symposium in Salt Lake City on March 6, 2008. The 2009 AMDA Foundation//Evercare® Awards will be presented at the national AMDA Symposium in Charlotte, NC, March 5-8, 2009.These awards will be based on programs nursing facilities have implemented and demonstrated to improve the quality of life for their long term care residents. Three awards of $10,000 each will be provided. At least one of the awards will be given specifically for improved advanced care planning and/or palliative care programs. The three facilities chosen for the award are expected to present a scientific poster of their quality improvement program at the 2009 AMDA Annual Symposium in Charlotte, NC. In addition, one program will be chosen to give an oral presentation at the Annual Symposium.Types of programs might include: * Patient safety initiatives – reducing falls, medication errors * Reduction of avoidable ER visits and acute hospitalizations * Improved consistency of staffing * Improved comprehensive advanced care planning * Improved palliative care programsAll nursing home facilities are eligible for the awards. Facilities may be for profit or not for profit and/or individual facility, regional chain, or national chain. In order for the program to be eligible, the program must be internally generated and funded by the nursing home facility; have demonstrated measurable outcomes and objectives and have proven sustainability and ability to be replicated in other facilities.Applying Online - The application deadline is November 10, 2008. All completed applications must be submitted electronically. To submit your online application you'll need to first attend to the following preparation:Document UploadsThe 2009 AMDA Foundation/Evercare® Awards Online Application requires that you also obtain, complete as necessary and upload the following documents: * Current copy of state/federal survey results; * Letter of Support from the medical director for the facility/institution; * A completed AMDA Foundation/Evercare® Awards Project Proposal; and * A completed AMDA Foundation/Evercare® Awards Detailed Budget.Documents of the following types are acceptable for uploading: ms-word; pdf; rtf; ms-excel; ms-powerpoint; ms-works; text; and zip. Documents for uploading must not exceed 6,144KB in size (6 megabytes).
American Medical Directors Association Foundation11000 Broken Land Parkway, Suite 405Columbia MD 21044Telephone: 410-992-3134Fax: 410-740-1318
The American Medical Directors Association Foundation and Pfizer have partnered to sponsor the Quality Improvement Awards, a program designed to encourage the development of innovative projects that will help to make a distinct impact on the quality of long term care.Types of Projects SupportedThe Awards will support initiatives that focus on facility staff education, quality improvement programs, research on interventions and treatment, and health literacy to directly enhance the quality of care provided to patients in Long Term Care settings.Proposals may be submitted for a general Quality Improvement project or in any one of the five therapeutic areas listed below. The therapeutic areas are: pain management, dementia, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or urinary incontinence.Education * Proposals in this category should focus on facility staff education and/or training programs. Due to a current Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant on assessment of Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) implementation, the Foundation will not fund projects related to implementation of AMDA CPGs.Quality Improvement Programs * Proposals should focus on training and mentoring facilities or organizations in continuous quality improvement (CQI) or specific QI projects covering areas of interest to the Foundation.Research Projects * Research projects should be approximately one year in length and conducted in a single facility. Results should be generalizable. * Examples could include an investigation into the characteristics of residents in the long term care setting whose weight loss is unavoidable, or a study looking at critical factors with hearing aid use.Health Literacy * Health literacy projects should focus on ways to enhance improving healthcare communications between long term care patients and their family/caregivers/surrogates. Devising such systems are particularly important given the diminished literacy skills, cognitive capacity and communication skills of many long term care residents, especially those with dementia. * Examples could include projects that focus on the following: innovative ways to communicate given literacy and functional limitations (e.g., cognitive impairment, hearing or vision loss); different strategies for communicating given technological advances (e.g., e-mail, video-conferencing); and, methods of communicating with patients and families surrounding functional and disease-focused issues, taking into consideration diminished literacy skills and cultural differences.AwardsAwards of $10,000-$15,000 each will be made to three winners in this competition to support their projects. Two awards will support Quality Improvement projects focusing on one of the five therapeutic areas, and the third award will support a General Quality Improvement project. Awards are intended to cover salary support, consultant fees, materials, and travel to the AMDA Annual Symposium to present project results.Application ProcedureThe application deadline is October 31, 2008. The AMDA Foundation/Pfizer QI Application must be completed and submitted online through our online application process. Note that registration is required since this online application involves submitting and uploading documents in electronic form.
AMDA Foundation.11000 Broken Land Parkway · Suite 405 · Columbia, MD 21044Phone: 410-992-3134 · Fax: 410-740-1318
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