Sponsor
Emanuel Cleaver
Representative · D-MO
Representative · D-MO
The bill offers targeted grants and evidence generation to improve care quality and data sharing for long-term and post-acute care, but its small scale and lack of ongoing funding risk limited reach, sustainability challenges for providers, and uneven benefits across rural and smaller organizations.
Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and other patients with chronic conditions could experience smoother care transitions, fewer rehospitalizations, and safer medication management because participating long-term and post-acute providers will share electronic health data and use improved clinical decision support and monitoring tools.
Long-term care and post-acute providers who receive grants can get up to $500,000 to implement interoperable health IT, reducing duplicative tests and improving care coordination at the provider level.
The program requires a nationally representative sample of providers and evaluation reports, producing evidence on costs and benefits that could inform future federal investments and policy decisions.
The authorized funding ($5 million per year) is small compared with national needs, so few providers will be helped and widescale adoption of interoperable health IT is likely to be slow.
Grants cover initial implementation but not ongoing operational and maintenance costs after the three-year award, leaving providers responsible for sustainability expenses.
Smaller and rural providers may be disadvantaged in the competitive grant process—despite a diversity priority—because they often lack grant-writing capacity, potentially widening rural/size-based disparities in access to improved HIT.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes HHS to award competitive grants to long-term/post-acute providers to adopt interoperable health IT, with $5M/year authorized for FY2027–FY2028.
Creates a competitive HHS grant program to help long-term care and post-acute providers adopt and connect certified health information technology. Grants (up to $500,000 per provider for three years) will fund interoperability, clinical decision support, notifications, monitoring, transitions-of-care improvements, and real-time data exchange to better coordinate care for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. The bill authorizes $5 million per year for FY2027 and FY2028, directs HHS to prioritize applicants likely to improve care for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and to ensure a diverse, national recipient mix, and requires preliminary and final reports evaluating technology adoption, clinical outcomes, cost impacts, and recommendations on program continuation or expansion.
Official title: To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to long-term care and post-acute care providers for purposes of developing and adopting health information technology.
Introduced July 22, 2026 by Emanuel Cleaver · Last progress July 22, 2026