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A new round of funding will help support Raleigh medical jobs that focus on children.

The State of North Carolina recently announced that it will receive a $9.3 million grant through the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act to develop technology that tracks and measures quality of care for children.

The NC Department of Health and Human Services, North Carolina Pediatric Society, and NC Office of Rural Health and Community Care worked together to secure the grant.

"This competitive grant is vital to ensuring that children in our state are healthy and ready to learn," Gov. Bev Perdue said. "This will help pediatric offices throughout the state make better use of technology so we can be sure that children, those with special needs in particular, are receiving the care they need."

Only 10 lead states received part of the $100 million in funding from CHIPRA. North Carolina plans to apply its funding toward three initiatives for youth who receive healthcare through NC Medicaid or N.C. Health Choice for Children.

Those initiatives include:

• Improve coordinated care for Children with Special Health Care Needs, focusing on children with developmental, behavioral and mental-health disorders. The effort will help narrow the gaps and disparities that special-needs children frequently encounter.
• Implement electronic health records for children.
• Implement and establish measures to increase the quality of care for children. Funding will be given to Community Care of North Carolina to create and evaluate methods for collecting and reporting data on health indicators specific to children.

"This will be a great opportunity for us to truly implement medical home standards and to coordinate care for kids, especially the ones who have special needs," Dr. Marian Earls, president of the N.C. Pediatric Society, said. "The focus now is on shifting to electronic patient records, and to integrate quality into practice, and this grant will help us move in that direction."

Labels: Raleigh medical jobs