Sunday, May 13, 2012

CMS Awards $122.6 Million


The CMS Innovation Center announced that 26 Health Care projects funded through ACA for $122.6 million will support innovations that will save money, deliver high quality medical care, and enhance the healthcare workforce. Several of the projects specifically involve the use of telehealth and telemedicine.

George Washington University received $1,939,127 for one of the projects. The project will use telemedicine to offer real-time, continuous, and interactive health monitoring to improve patient safety and treatment.

The funding will train a dialysis nurse workforce to provide care coordination utilizing team-based care, telemedicine, and the use of remote patient data to guide treatment for co-morbid, complex patients.

This approach is expected to improve patient access to care, adherence to treatment, ability to self- manage, produce better health outcomes, and reduce the cost of care for peritoneal dialysis patients with complex healthcare issues.

A project at Emory University’s Center for Critical Care, received $10,749, 332 to partner with Philips Company, a tele-intensive care unit contractor along with several other medical centers. The funding will be used is to hire more than 40 critical care professionals to be trained in the use of teleICU services with the goal to reach and help an additional 400 clinical, technical, and support professionals in underserved and rural hospitals in Northern Georgia.

The project will serve over 10,000 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and will work to deal with the lack of critical care doctors in the region, improve access to quality healthcare, and lower the costs associated with not only inefficient care but also address the lack of transport services. This project could save perhaps as much as $18.4 million over a period of 3 years.