Healthcare Educational and Research Fund (on behalf of the Healthcare Association of New York State)

As a statewide trade association for New York’s hospitals, the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) currently is working with hospital-based clinics to improve outcomes for New Yorkers with diabetes.

To date, HANYS has received three grants to help advance the clinical goals of the NYHealth Diabetes Campaign. Over the past three years, HANYS has worked with more than 100 sites, and has helped 900 providers achieve excellence in diabetes care. One of the deliverables was for HANYS to help 600 providers attain National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) or Bridges to Excellence (BTE) diabetes recognition. Under a previous grant, HANYS was successful in helping 200 providers achieve recognition. NYHealth awarded HANYS a grant to provide $600 grant awards to each of the remaining 400 providers that HANYS planned to target through the end of the Campaign.

Under this grant, HANYS continued to aggressively recruit primary care providers affiliated with its member hospitals to be part of the Campaign. It encountered several challenges in engaging the remaining 400 providers in attaining NCQA or BTE diabetes recognition. Providers instead had focused their time and attention on achieving patient-centered medical home recognition as a result of its financial reimbursement incentives. A handful of sites also were still focused on implementing or enhancing electronic medical records. HANYS worked to engage smaller institutions in low-income neighborhoods where there may be less-engaged leadership and limited resources and staff members. After informally surveying these late adopters, HANYS believed that a grant of $600 per provider who achieves NCQA or BTE diabetes recognition would activate senior leaders and focus the attention of staff members on achieving excellence in diabetes care.