UW Awarded $1.2 Million in Medicare Imaging Demonstration Project

Posted on February 2011

It is our pleasure to announce that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of five institutions selected by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to participate in the Medicare Imaging Demonstration Project (MID).

Drs. Richard Bruce and Gary Wendt developed a proposal and were awarded a $1.2 million contract with CMS to facilitate the evaluation of using a decision support system (DSS) at the UW. DSS has the potential to improve care quality, advance imaging indication quality, educate ordering providers, and reduce duplicated and limited utility imaging for patients.

The MID will assess the impact of DSS in clinical settings, including UW Hospital and Clinics, Meriter Health Services, and a regional HMO (Group Health Cooperative or South Central Wisconsin). This project aims to deploy a DSS solution that will enhance imaging services to UW referring physicians and patients in diverse subspecialty, community, and rural practice environments.

DSS will be integrated as a Point of Order system with Epic EHR systems to limit changes to provider workflows and increase ordering consistency through the baseline data collection and intervention phases of the MID project.

Congratulations to Drs. Bruce and Wendt on their inclusion in this project!

For more information, please visit http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/cms-selects-5-participants-medicare-imaging-demonstration-project  and the Press Release from CMS.