The California Endowment in Woodland Hills and the Oakland-based California HealthCare Foundation have announced $4.5 million in grants for five implementation projects through a joint initiative to reduce hospitalization and overuse of emergency rooms throughout California.

The Frequent Users of Health Services Initiative is a five-year, $10 million program to serve "frequent users" of emergency rooms and inpatient services — people with serious health conditions who also suffer from mental health disorders, substance abuse and alcohol problems, and homelessness. The initiative aims to decrease the expensive and ineffective use of emergency rooms and hospitals to treat this population, and to improve the health care for individual frequent users in ways that meet their needs.

In this, the final round of funding, the foundations awarded three-year implementation grants to coalitions whose members include public and private institutions and community-based organizations. In order to receive a $900,000 grant, each collaborative had to generate an additional $1.8 million on its own. The recipients are the Alameda Health Consortium, in Northern Alameda County; the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California, in Santa Clara County; the Kaweah Delta Hospital Foundation, in Tulare County; the Tarzana Treatment Centers, in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita areas of Los Angeles County; and the UC Davis Health System, in Sacramento County.

"We've witnessed significant progress from the initiative's first round of funding in 2003," said Dr. Melissa Welch, project director for the initiative. "The seven projects funded in 2003 created more effective ways to link frequent user patients to the multiple community-based services they need to manage their medical crises; this in turn reduces the need for hospital care."