UW Awarded $1.4 million for CMS Imaging Demonstration

February 23, 2011

By WHN staff

UW-Madison is receiving $1.4 Million to participate in a Medicare demonstration project aimed at reducing inappropriate imaging scans on patients. UW is one of five institutions selected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to participate in the project.

Drs. Richard Bruce and Gary Wendt of the Department of Radiology in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health will lead the project. The Medicare Imaging Demonstration will assess the impact of decision support systems in clinical settings, including UW Hospital and Clinics, Meriter Health Services and a regional HMO (Group Health Cooperative or South Central Wisconsin), according to a release issued by UW Health. The decision support systems will provide immediate feedback to doctors as to whether the tests are considered appropriate for the patients. Appropriateness assessments will be based on clinical guidelines endorsed by medical specialty societies.

The two-year Medicare demonstration will also include physician practices recruited by Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston; Henry Ford Health System in Detroit; Maine Medical Center-Physician Hospital Organization in Portland; and the National Imaging Associates in Avon, Conn.. CMS will test whether decision support boosts appropriate utilization of certain types of magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and nuclear medicine.

Read the UW Health release.