Latest News

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Wisconsin. It is also the most preventable, yet least prevented cancer. Screening is important for early detection, but disparities in screening rates exist between Wisconsin clinics. HIP Investigator, Dr. Jen Weiss and a team of investigators received a research award through the Wisconsin Partnership Program Collaborative Health Sciences Program to identify strategies from high-performing clinics to improve colorectal cancer screening rates at low-performing clinics in rural and urban communities in Wisconsin. The long-term goal of the research is to decrease statewide colorectal cancer incidence and mortality.

Report Overview

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), in collaboration with Health Innovation Program, developed the Wisconsin Health Disparities Report to identify where disparities in health outcomes and care exist in Wisconsin and to help inform and accelerate programs that are working to eliminate disparities.

Recently, healthcare has seen a sharp rise in the implementation of machine learning derived algorithms for predicting risk across a broad range of clinical scenarios. The Number Needed to Treat Thresholding Toolkit created by HIP Investigator, Dr. Brian Patterson of the BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine, allows users to generate similar graphs, either from raw data of an algorithm’s performance in a given population, or applying an algorithm with known test characteristics at various thresholds to a theoretical population.

Predictive analytics has the potential to transform the health care system by using existing data to predict and prevent poor clinical outcomes, provide targeted care, and lower costs. A challenge for health systems is selecting and implementing predictive models within clinical and operational workflows.

To guide health systems through the process of selecting and implementing a predictive model within their system, the UW Health Applied Data Science team and the Health Innovation Program developed a toolkit to support planning for and implementation of a predictive model. This toolkit was tested through the implementation of a sepsis prediction model in the inpatient setting at UW Health, a large Midwestern academic health system with four hospitals.

The Case Management Benefit Scoring System Toolkit is now available on HIPxChange. Dr. Maureen Smith (HIP Investigator), Dr. Menggang Yu (HIP Investigator), and Dr. Jared Huling (an Assistant Professor of Statistics at The Ohio State University) partnered with the UW academic health system (UW Health) to implement a benefit scoring system that is used to identify patients for enrollment into case management.

Dr. Barbara Bowers, the Founding Director of the Center for Aging Research and Education, recently published the Implementing Change in Long-Term Care Toolkit on HIPxChange. This toolkit was designed to assist organizations, and the staff who work there, to implement changes that will improve care quality and to sustain them. In this toolkit you will find case studies, exercises, worksheets, tools, system-level questions, reading guides and case studies in five clinical practice areas that are often the focus of culture change efforts: elimination, skin, falls, nutrition and psychosocial well-being.

Dr. Barbara King, the Executive Director of the Center for Aging Research and Education recently published the Geriatric Simulations Toolkit on HIPxChange. In this toolkit you will find concrete guidance and materials to use in four simulations related to caring for older adults. Also included are reflections from students and instructors that have experienced the simulations, recommended resources, and tool recommendations for those wishing to evaluate implementation of the simulations and their impact on learners. View the toolkit on HIPxChange here.

HIP Investigator, Dr. Andrew Quanbeck published the toolkit, Decision-framing to Incorporate Stakeholder Perspectives in Implementation. Dr. Quanbeck is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health within the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine & Public Health. This toolkit contains information on how people make decisions, and how common decision-making biases can affect the success of implementation projects.