Restoring health-quality grants The Business Council and two western New York health-care groups are urging lawmakers to fund two grant programs designed to seek new ways to measure and improve health-care quality.
The Business Council, the Niagara Health Quality Coalition, and the Rochester Health Commission want lawmakers to restore funding for the Health Information and Quality Improvement grant program and the Quality Measurement grant program, said Elliott Shaw, director of government affairs for The Council and its health-care specialist.
These programs were funded under the Health Care Reform Act (HCRA) of 1996 but not in the new HCRA passed last December.
Community organizations around the state received a relatively modest $4.6 million in grants under the original programs, and these grants led to many innovative ideas for enhancing health quality, he said.
"Measuring quality, publicizing the measurements, and responding to them remain critical challenges to New York's health-care system," Shaw said. "Restoring this program should be a top health priority in the state budget negotiations."
There is strong support for restoring funding for these grants programs among both Democrats and Republicans in both the Senate and the Assembly, he added.