Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently announced the first class of the HHS External Innovation Fellows, which aims to bring together outside entrepreneurs with internal innovators from the agency in an effort to improve healthcare delivery.
Selected from an applicant pool of more than 100 innovators, the six External Fellows will spend the next six to 12 months working on their projects. “The HHS Innovation Fellows Program pairs up internal and external innovators to tackle some of the most complex healthcare problems we face,” Secretary Sebelius said in a statement. “The Fellows bring entrepreneurial and innovative expertise that will help revolutionize the way things are done in government and improve the health of millions of Americans in the process.”
One of the winners, Mindy Hangsleben, a described innovator in the lean methodology from Portland, Ore. aims to pair the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The goal is to develop new clinical quality measures that incorporate information available in electronic health records to monitor the impact of the implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Another winner looked to develop an electronic infrastructure that allows states to integrate the Modified Adjusted Gross Income method for determining eligibility for Medicaid and the CHIP eligibility required under the ACA.
