HHS Designates $46M to Indiana University to Improve Patient Care

Indiana University School of Medicine has received a federal grant of $46.4 million over the next 4 years to help physicians meet the Affordable Care Act’s goals of reducing costs and improving patient care. The Department of Health and Human Services designated $685 million to 39 schools, medical group practices, health care centers and national organizations, including Indiana University, which is leading a consortium of 8 institutions across the Midwest. 

Indiana University will use the money to establish a system of coaches who will work with medical practices and advise doctors on ways to improve their practices to be more efficient and achieve better outcomes for their patients. The Center for Health Innovation & Implementation Science on IU's campus will train 45 of these coaches. According to Dr. Malaz Boustani, principal investigator on the grant and the center’s COO, the coaches will help doctor master 3 things, “Number one, how to do effective population health management, how they can implement very quickly evidence-based medicine in their practice, and finally how can they make their practice a high-reliability practice that provides a very safe and lean operation.” 

A similar program already in place at Eskenazi Health and Indiana University Health Arnett has helped doctors put in place an evidence-based care model for older patients with dementia or depression. The model involved collaboration between different healthcare providers and has cut the number of unnecessary emergency department visits almost in half for the model's population. Over four years, Boustani hopes to reach 11,500 clinicians in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan with the new grant money as well as support from its partners: Purdue University, Wayne State University and Northwestern University.

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