Health Care Innovation Awards: The Rector and the Visitors of the University of Virginia Project Profile

THE RECTOR AND VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA    

Project Title: "Proactive Palliative Care and Palliative Radiation Model"
Geographic Reach: Virginia
Funding Amount: $2,571,322
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $2,920,639

Summary

The Rector and the Visitors of the University of Virginia received an award to improve care for patients with advanced cancer. The program emphasizes patient reported outcomes as a key source of patient data for longitudinally tracking patient status and outcomes. This shared data system will be used for multi-disciplinary care coordination to improve quality of care, increase survival, and reduce costs mainly through prevention of emergency room visits and hospitalizations. The patient reported outcomes database will be directly integrated into the EPIC Electronic Medical Record and will alert the health care team of critical changes in patient status to allow for rapid interventions. The care model includes a weekly multi-disciplinary Supportive Care Team meeting to address management of the most critical patients requiring rapid coordination of multi-disciplinary care plans for optimal patient care. The program includes a redesign of radiation therapy workflow to allow for a rapid single-day treatment for cancer that has spread to bone with the goal of the entire process being completed in 1-2 hours and providing rapid pain relief and less treatment related toxicity than standard palliative treatments due to the targeting of the radiation. Over a three-year period, Rector and Visitors' program will train an estimated 65 workers and create three new jobs to support this project.

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