Gerald Zarlengo, MD, Chairman & CEO,
Copic Insurance Company

As Copic celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, one of the accomplishments that continues to represent how we put our mission into action is the Copic Medical Foundation. The Foundation is part of the legacy of our first external, non-physician board member, Harold “Hal” Williamson – reflecting his passion for giving back to the community in real and meaningful ways.

Today, the Foundation’s efforts extend across multiple states, and have impacted the lives of many. Since 1991, we’ve provided more than $12 million in funding to improve patient care and medical outcomes.

Grant funding through the Copic Medical Foundation

As part of our larger commitment to patient safety, our 2025 focus for grant funding is reducing fragmentation across care settings. A top concern in the field of patient safety, breakdowns in care from a fragmented health care system can lead to readmissions, missed diagnoses, medication errors, delayed treatment, duplicative testing and procedures, and reduction in quality of care leading to general patient and provider dissatisfaction.

We’re excited to fund approaches that take on these safety concerns. For the Foundation’s grant funding, contributing to a solution means supporting scalable or replicable solutions, focusing on the testing of new ideas or growing existing solutions, and then seeing avenues for larger application. This will be our last grant cycle focused on reducing fragmentation across care settings. The Foundation will evaluate and revise our focus area for the 2026 grant cycle, to be posted in fall 2025.

2025 Funding Cycle – We are accepting applications for grant funding from Nov. 1, 2024 through Jan. 15, 2025 for our 2025 cycle of grant funding. 

What we fund:

• Programs and initiatives that improve patient safety and quality of care through systems changes and improvements
• Development and implementation of tools to improve care delivery
• Pilot programs designed to reduce medical errors

Minimum criteria to be considered:

• Approach or program demonstrates potential for uptake or replication by the health care community
• Organization is designated as a 501(c)(3) organization or has an identified fiduciary

Deadlines and applications –
Grant applications are due Jan. 15, 2024 by 5 p.m. Visit our website at www.copicfoundation.org to review requirements and submit an application. If you have any questions, please email mhintze@copic.com. Applicants can expect to hear from us regarding potential support by March 31, 2025.

PAST GRANT RECIPIENTS IN COLORADO

2021 | Mile High Health Alliance’s “Orange Flag” Project: This project used historic, predictive and real-time data to inform emergency department personnel of a patient’s high utilization of emergency services to aid in care coordination.

2021-2022 | Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation’s ImPACT Navigation Hub: A centralized resource hub to coordinate the transition of young adult patients with pediatric onset conditions to adult care.

2022 | West Mountain Regional Health Alliance’s Community Resource Network West Mountain: A social information exchange platform in western Colorado, designed to facilitate a care coordination effort to support individuals experiencing homelessness with coordination by hospitals, health and behavioral health providers, community organizations and government agencies.

2023 | Metropolitan State University of Denver: A EMT and nursing interprofessional education pilot and launch focusing on interprofessional education to reduce fragmentation and improve patient outcomes.

GRANTEE SUMMIT

In May 2025, the Copic Medical Foundation will host our 4th annual Grantee Summit which brings together past and current grantees as well as community partners. The event is structured so that attendees can connect, share learnings, and explore opportunities for collaboration related to the grant focus area of “reducing fragmentation across care settings.” 

We look at the Grantee Summit as an initiative that supports our goal to be a catalyst in improving the quality of health care delivery by reducing adverse outcomes and supporting innovation. Our hope is for grantees to leave this event with new ideas, new partners and new perspectives which will support their efforts to move their work forward at a greater scale with increased impact on improving patient safety.