Patient Safety RFA press release

Cambridge, MA, October 31, 2013—CRICO, a recognized leader in evidence-based risk management, owned by and serving the Harvard medical community, is pleased to announce a Request for Applications (RFA) to advance our commitment to patient safety. This RFA is designed to support identification, evaluation, and implementation of solutions in patient safety that align with identified areas of malpractice risk. Funding priority will be given to proposals that are original, evidence-based and directly aimed at improving patient safety and reducing malpractice risk. This includes proposals that (a) examine specific domains of malpractice risk and patient harm while assessing the factors at various levels that contribute to such risk (b) investigating intervention strategies at individual, systems, and organizational-levels to help reduce and eliminate specific patient harm and malpractice risk and (c) disseminating proven solutions to reduce malpractice risk. It is anticipated that knowledge gained from these projects will help develop strategies that positively affect care delivery and promote risk reduction.

Applications must address one of the following priority areas: Diagnosis (Specific Focus: Primary Care), Community Acquisition, Health Information Technology, Patient Engagement, and Accountable Care Organizations. In the area of Diagnosis-, we are particularly interested in proposals that address new primary care delivery models aimed at mitigating risk in the primary care environment such as patient center-medical home (PCMH) and team –based practice redesign as well as strategies to mitigate errors of cognition often seen in cases involving delays in diagnosis.

On the Community Acquisition front, we are interested in proposals that identify strategies to improve physician engagement as it relates to organizational network expansion, the evaluation of information technology infrastructures to support additional community/practice inclusion, and the development of core patient safety guidelines that can complement CRICO’s existing underwriting requirements.

In the area of Patient Engagement, we are interested in proposals that address patient engagement as a key component towards improving patient safety. Areas of concentration may include the evaluation of risks/benefits of patient portals, patient engagement in advance care planning, and novel approaches towards understanding and managing patient expectations.

From a health information technology perspective, we are interested in proposals that evaluate, and demonstrate the effectiveness of clinical decision support tools to incorporate clinical guidelines and diagnostic supports to enhance decision making a the point –of- care. Evaluation of merging technologies such as robotics, genomics and Telehealth are also of interest.

In the field of Data Analytics we are interested in working with individuals and/or entities to investigate new and innovative ways to leverage internal (malpractice) data with external data sources such as administrative data, billing data, EHR data, clinical data repositories, and other referential data sets to identify leading indicators of safety and malpractice risk.

Proposals that identify ways to enhance existing educational strategies for Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation (OPPE/FPPE) as well as Maintenance of Certification (MOC) will also be considered as will proposals identifying emerging risks/benefits of ACOs and Population Health Management models.

The RFA is offered to (CRICO-insured) members from all levels of experience. Partnerships across CRICO-insured organizations will be encouraged. Submissions that contain designs to further impact enterprise risk and emerging patient safety issues will also be encouraged.

RFA Timeline

October 31, 2013 RFA announcement

November 13, 2013 Deadline for Letter of Intent

November 27, 2013 Invitations for full applications

January 8, 2014 Deadline for full application

January 22, 2014 Final applications selected

January 31, 2014 Selected proposals presented to Spread Committee

March 2014 Final proposals presented to Operations Committee

Project Duration and Funding

Support will be provided for no more than two years, with a total budget not to exceed $200,000 (per award). CRICO principal investigators must agree to dedicate at least five percent of their time to approved projects during the grant cycle. All research is to be conducted at CRICO member health care organizations, with written notification from these organizations acknowledging the support and approval. Applicants with proposals requiring greater than $200,000 to meet the project’s aims will need to demonstrate proof of co-funding.

The Letters of Intent will be reviewed internally by CRICO to determine alignment with CRICO’s mission and targeted areas of funding interest. Proposals deemed most congruent with CRICO’s objectives will be invited to submit a full-length, detailed proposal for peer review. Institutional subject matter experts within each target area will serve as reviewers. Proposals selected by the review committee will be presented at CRICOs 2014 SPREAD and Operations Committee meetings and submitted to the CRICO Board of Directors in March 2014 for funding consideration and approval.

If you have any questions regarding this announcement or requirements for the letter of intent, please refer to our website at ……. or contact Carol Keohane, Assistant Vice President, CRICO at 617-679-1415 or by email at ckeohane.rmf.harvard.edu.