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You Are Here: AHRQ Home > Research Findings > Primary Care > IMPaCT (Infrastructure for Maintaining Primary Care Transformation) Award Recipients

IMPaCT (Infrastructure for Maintaining Primary Care Transformation)

Award Recipients

AHRQ has awarded four cooperative grants to support model State-level initiatives using primary care extension agents in small and mid-sized independent primary care practices to assist with primary care redesign.

AHRQ has awarded four cooperative grants for "Infrastructure for Maintaining Primary Care Transformation (IMPaCT)—Support for Models of Multi-Sector, State-Level Excellence." These grants support model State-level initiatives using primary care extension agents in small and mid-sized independent primary care practices to assist with primary care redesign and transformation.

The IMPaCT grant recipients, announced in September 2011, are four established programs that will serve as models to others. By supporting experienced programs and requiring rigorous evaluation, AHRQ will seek to demonstrate how a national primary care health extension program could be built.

"AHRQ will encourage program synthesis among the four grantees, emphasizing sustainability and dissemination of lessons learned about primary care practice support," according to Michael Parchman, M.D., IMPaCT Project Officer at AHRQ. "Each of the four grantees will create State-level collaborations with three other States to assist with their State-level primary care transformation effort. Each project has the potential to serve as a model for future Federal and State initiatives."

This funding also is intended to further the expansion of existing programs, allowing primary care practices and the communities they serve to benefit immediately.

North Carolina IMPaCT: Advancing and Spreading Primary Care Transformation

Principal Investigator: Darren DeWalt, University of North Carolina
Grant Number: 1 U18HS020940
Project Period: 09/30/2011 - 09/29/2013
AHRQ Funding Amount: $999,961

This project will enhance and accelerate existing primary care improvement and redesign using the established statewide infrastructure of Community Care of North Carolina and the North Carolina Area Health Education Centers.

Specific objectives are to:

  1. Conduct a leadership development program to enhance regional medical and quality improvement leaders' effectiveness.
  2. Enhance the current primary care transformation change package to include focused attention on primary care's role in transitions across care settings.
  3. Augment ongoing evaluations of the program with integration of claims data to evaluate utilization and cost of care with existing use of practice reported performance.
  4. Disseminate the lessons learned in North Carolina to three other States.

PA SPREAD: PA Spreading Primary Care Enhanced Delivery Infrastructure

Principal Investigator: Robert Gabbay, Penn State Hershey College of Medicine
Grant Number: 1 U18HS020988
Project Period: 09/30/2011 - 09/29/2013
AHRQ Funding Amount: $961,586

Pennsylvania's ongoing Medical Home initiative is led by the State government and involves 17 payers, 152 mostly smaller practices, and the primary care and business communities. PA SPREAD aims to enhance the current initiative by integrating lessons learned in teaching the Medical Home model, facilitating practices, and leveraging IT resources. These innovations will be tested in partnership with the PA Area Health Education Center (AHEC) network of preceptor practices.

Specific objectives are to:

  1. Enhance the current initiative by refining the learning community model.
  2. Pilot and evaluate these innovations in two regional learning collaboratives with AHEC-based primary care extension agents.
  3. Packaging our program for dissemination to three other States through multi-stakeholder engagement.

HEROs: New Mexico's Health Extension as a Model for Primary Care-Transformation

Principal Investigator: Arthur Kaufman, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
Grant Number: 1 U18HS020890
Project Period: 09/30/2011 - 09/29/2013
AHRQ Funding Amount: $994,746

The Health Extension Rural Offices (HEROs) AHRQ IMPaCT grant funding will add an array of PCMH practice improvement strategies to complement the existing IT component of primary care practice transformation provided by LCF Research, the State-designated Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center to small and medium-sized independent primary care practices in New Mexico. The plan will decentralize many Albuquerque-based resources in support of practice transformation and community health improvement and will be scalable to other States.

Specific objectives are to:

  1. Employ Health Extension as a catalyst for improving primary care practice.
  2. Deploy HEROs staff as primary care practice transformation coaches.
  3. Adopt quality improvement models and strategies by primary care practices.
  4. Develop a scalable model for a National Primary Care Extension Service.
  5. Evaluation and dissemination of the primary care extension model.

Primary Care Extension in Oklahoma: An Evidence-Based Approach to Dissemination and Implementation

Principal Investigator: James Mold, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
Grant Number: 1 U18HS020972
Project Period: 09/30/2011 - 09/29/2013
AHRQ Funding Amount: $999,015

The purpose of this project is to develop a county-based health improvement infrastructure that will help primary care practices become patient-centered medical homes and to improve the health of Oklahomans and provide assistance to three other States, helping them to create similar infrastructures.

Specific objectives include:

  1. Clinician education, mobilization, and input.
  2. Alignment of the organizations and quality improvement providers.
  3. Development of an organizational blueprint.
  4. A plan for recruiting, training, and certifying practice facilitators.
  5. Development of a process for identification and prioritization of improvement projects.
  6. Identification of sustainable funding to supplement project-specific funding.

For more information about these grants, please contact Leilani Liggins at Leilani.Liggins@AHRQ.hhs.gov.

Current as of October 2011

Internet Citation:

IMPaCT (Infrastructure for Maintaining Primary Care Transformation) Award Recipients. October 2011. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. http://www.ahrq.gov/research/impactaw.htm

 
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