Use of Grant Funds
It is expected that most of these grant funds will be used to purchase technical assistance, services, training and information technology. To help maximize purchasing power through economies of scale, eligible hospitals not already in a system or network are strongly encouraged to organize themselves into consortiums and pool their grant funds for the purchase of these services. SORHs can help their eligible hospitals form consortiums and may also purchase the goods and services they need.
Hospitals were asked to describe unmet needs and their use of grant funds in the areas of 1) PPS, 2) HIPAA compliance, and 3) QI. Use of grant funds for PPS has remained stable at about 6 percent for each of the four years. A significant shift has occurred over the four-year course of the grant from using grant funds for HIPAA compliance toward quality improvement initiatives. In FY 2002, most (71 percent) of the grant funds were used for HIPAA compliance activities; in FY 2005, most (60 percent) of the grant funds were used for quality improvement activities.
Health Information Technology
An inventory of use of grant funds for health information and communications technology was conducted for the FY 2004 annual report. Of the 1,523 participating SHIP hospitals, 1,095 or 72 percent used some or all of their grant funds to invest in health information communications technology.