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EMPLOYERS ELIGIBLE FOR GRANTS

Posted On: Mar. 16, 1997 12:00 AM CST

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-Employers now can apply for a share of $3 million in grants for innovative projects that address quality and cost issues in workers compensation medical care.

This is the second round of grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Princeton, N.J., but the first for which employers are eligible. The foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to improving health care in the United States, previously awarded about $3 million in grants for demonstration or evaluation projects to stimulate innovative delivery and financing of workers comp (BI, Nov. 25, 1996).

They include efforts to introduce more managed care techniques, implement experimental 24-hour coverage programs and evaluate the effectiveness of medical care practice parameters.

Grants for the new initiative may be used for staff salaries, consultant fees, data collection and analysis, meetings, supplies and other direct expenses, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said. The application deadline is Sept. 5. Recipients will be announced in March 1998.

Also, a voluntary workshop for applicants will be held May 13 at Buena Vista Palace in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., near Orlando.

For more information, call Jay Himmelstein, the foundation's national program director, at the Occupational and Environmental Health Program of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, Mass., 508-856-3576.