Cohen Announces More Than $520K for UT Health Science Center

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN-9) today announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded the University of Tennessee Health Science Center two grants worth $523,415 for research. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will distribute $378,258 to fund the Health Science Center’s research on the impact of Medicare payment rule changes on hospital practices. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) will give the Health Science Center $145,157 to fund research on deafness and communicative disorders.

“The work done at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center improves the state of healthcare in Tennessee and across the country,” said Congressman Cohen. “This new federal funding will enable Health Science Center scientists and doctors to continue to research, find cures, and save the lives of people in Memphis and beyond.”

AHRQ is one of the agencies that make up the Department of Health and Human Services. AHRQ’s mission is to “improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans.” The grant from the AHRQ will enable Health Science Center scientists to research the impact of a new Medicare policy that denies payment to hospitals for eight preventable complications of medical care, such as blood stream and urinary tract infections. The research will investigate the impact of the new Medicare policy on hospital practices in order to determine whether negative incentives, like Medicare nonpayment, have a positive effect on hospital quality improvement. This research could have a wide-ranging impact on public health policy across the country.

NIDCD is one component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The mission of NIDCD is “to conduct and support biomedical and behavioral research and research training in the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech, and language.” The NIDCD grant will enable Health Science Center scientists to make new advances in biological research related to deafness and communicative disorders.