(The Center Square) – Tennessee awarded $119 million of federal funds to fund 41 projects in the second round of the Healthcare Resiliency program Tuesday.
The funds went for capital improvements to increase brick-and-mortar hospital capacity and to Practice Transformation and Extension project to increase health care access.
It was part of the total $3.7 billion in funds through the Tennessee Resiliency Plan, an effort approved by the state’s Financial Stimulus Accountability Group.
The largest grants were capital improvement projects with $19.6 million to University Health Systems and $16.8 million to the Mountain State Health Alliance. Other capital recipients were Shelby County Health Care Corp. ($2.9 million), Cookeville Regional Medical Center ($9.4 million), Bolivar General Hospital ($9.6 million), Dyersburg Health ($2.1 million), Fort Loudoun Medical Center ($5.9 million), Erlanger Medical Center ($3 million), Memorial Healthcare System ($0.3 million) and Henderson County Community Hospital ($0.6 million).
“This funding will support our hospital and health facilities through innovative solutions that expand services, address staffing shortages, and enable providers to meet immediate, emerging, and long-term needs in all communities,” Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, said in a statement.
The stimulus accountability group initially sent $230 million to the Health Resiliency Plan with $145 million for capital grants and $75 million for practice transformation grants. Through the process, $21.5 million of the capital grants were remaining and transferred to the practice transformation program along with the new $20.6 million in funding to allow the program to fully fund 18 projects with a prioritization toward grants helping practices in at-risk and distressed counties.
The largest practice transformation grants went to University Health System for its East Tennessee Community Care Model ($5.2 million) and Ascension Medical Group (Saint Thomas Medical Partners) for its Assessing Social Drivers of Health Initiative ($4.2 million).
Other multi-million dollar grants included Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation for its Electronic Medical Records Transformation Project ($3.7 million), Maury Regional Health Network for expanding the reach of services in Lawrenceburg ($2.4 million), Madisonville Primary Care Group for mobile access to primary and imaging services ($2.1 million), ConnectUs Health for Maternal Community Health Services ($2.9 million) and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis for its Transforming Lives through Healthy Homes ($2.3 million).
It also included Tri State Community Health Center’s It’s About Health ($3.9 million), Hope Family Health’s Upper Middle Tennessee Rural Health Network ($2.8 million), the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing’s road map ($2.6 million), Cumberland Pediatric Foundation’s Increasing Access to Care in Low Resource Clinics ($3 million) and Woodbine Community Organization’s Primary Care for Low-Income Tennessee Seniors ($1.9 million).
