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Meet the 2022 DxQI Seed Grant Awardees

SIDM has issued the third grant round, totaling $3 million over three years, as part of the organization’s DxQI Seed Grant Program. Sixteen organizations will receive awards up to $50,000 to test interventions to improve the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of diagnoses.

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Special Award Areas:

  • With the additional support of The John A. Hartford Foundation, SIDM will award an “Age-Friendly Care” DxQI Seed Grant. The awardee will implement a project to improve diagnostic quality and safety for older adults. This work is vital because diagnostic error in older adults is common and errors frequently arise from contributing factors that are unique to this population, including polypharmacy, cognitive issues such as dementia, mobility limitations, and chronic illnesses.

DxQI Seed Grant Overview

Given the magnitude of diagnostic error burden, SIDM advocates for increased attention by health systems to improve the quality of their diagnostic processes. This goes beyond avoiding errors and includes consideration of accuracy, timeliness, cost, and patient convenience. Designing optimal diagnostic processes will require careful balancing among these competing demands. Given the dearth of solutions, we believe catalyzing a "bottom-up" approach, whereby frontline health professionals and patients are engaged in quality improvement to develop and test plausible solutions, will most likely produce the best outcomes.

Eligible Grantees*

Care-delivery systems* are eligible to apply and will typically come from the following:

  • Office-based primary care
  • Office-based specialty care
  • Clinic (e.g., urgent, acute)
  • Other ambulatory centers (e.g., surgical/imaging)
  • Community hospital
  • Academic medical center
  • Psychiatric hospital
  • Safety net hospital
  • Critical access hospital
  • VA & military centers
  • Member of integrated delivery system
  • Federally Qualified Health Centers
  • Rehab facility
  • Skilled nursing facility
  • Psychiatric hospital

*PLEASE NOTE: Organizations that do NOT provide direct patient care, such as medical equipment companies, educational institutions, physician management organizations, and state hospital associations, are not eligible to apply for a Seed Grant but can partner with an eligible entity as a supporting organization. While international locations are eligible to receive a grant, s the importance of the problem and its potential solution to the U.S. healthcare system will need to be addressed in the proposal. Failure to demonstrate problem importance and intervention applicability will result in a denial.

Areas for Improvement

Over the course of three years, grants will be awarded in the following categories:

  • Diagnostic Quality Disparities: Proposals that seek to reduce the risk of diagnostic error or delayed treatment and improve diagnostic quality outcomes related to health disparities associated with age, race/ethnicity, sex, and/or other social determinants of health. 40% of awards

SIDM strongly encourages organizations to submit proposals that address both areas of improvement: Big 3 and Diagnostic Quality Disparities.

  • Open: Topics that do not address one of the previous two areas. Up to 20% of awards

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What are we looking for?

A qualifying proposal will meet the following criteria:

1. The organization and project lead represent an eligible healthcare entity where direct patient care is provided.

2. The proposed intervention can be described by one of the four categories below:

a. A well-defined problem and discovery period (maximum six months) followed by adequate time for a to-be defined intervention that will be tested and improved.

b. A well-defined intervention that will be tested and improved.

c. An implemented, but unevaluated intervention with a well-defined evaluation plan and an opportunity to improve.

d. An implemented, evaluated intervention that will be tested and improved in a novel setting or with a novel population.

3. We are looking for interventions to reduce important sources of diagnostic error that might include, but are not limited to: 

a. Cognitive interventions in patient care settings such as clinical decision support tools;

b. Systems interventions to change diagnostic processes or workflow in practice;

c. Educational interventions where the targeted outcomes of the study are improvements in diagnosis by clinicians; or

d. Other novel/innovative approaches that have the opportunity to be scaled and spread across the broader field.

4. The interdisciplinary project team should include stakeholders with the skills, competencies, and authority to execute the project plan. In addition, the team should include one or more members with qualifications and experience in QI. Projects involving IT should include appropriate operational support staff.

5. The team includes meaningful patient or family engagement (PFE) or an adequate explanation of why the team would not benefit from patient or family engagement on the proposed project. Additional guidance on meaningful PFE can be found in the FAQ’s.

6. The executive sponsor provides a letter of support that attests to EACH of the following elements (NOTE: lack of any of these elements in the Executive Sponsor letter may result in disqualification of the application):

    • Will assure timely execution of grant agreement, if funded
    • There is organizational support for the project Aims
    • The team is appropriate to meet the project Aims
    • The budget is sufficient to meet project aims on time and within scope
    • Required people and resources to meet project Aims will be available
    • Data necessary for project completion will be accessible and available
    • The sponsor will assist in overcoming unanticipated barriers/challenges that pose a threat to project completion

Download the RFP

Scoring Criteria

Note that a technical review by a limited number of people will be performed to ensure that the submission is complete, that the core project team is appropriate, and that the budget is sufficiently described. If a proposal passes this initial review, the proposal will be submitted to peer review using the criteria below.

Content Review

1. Aims, Background, and Approach

a. Do the aims utilize SMART goal attributes (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely)?

b. Does the proposal explicitly and, where possible, quantifiably justify the problem selection, i.e. describe the magnitude of the problem and establish its importance to the diagnostic process?

c. Does the proposal clearly address the importance of addressing this problem locally and for the nation-at-large?

d. Does the proposed intervention address the problem’s root causes and is relevant supporting literature is referenced? If an international location, is the applicability of the intervention to the US health system is evident?

2. Project Plan

a. Is the population receiving the intervention clearly specified and consistent with the aims?

b. Are the project plan and time allotted for planning, implementing (or testing), evaluating, and improving the intervention reasonable and appropriate?

c. Are the chosen measures of effectiveness as they relate to the desired outcomes adequately described?

d. Is method for evaluation is sufficient for determining the project’s impact?

e. Are operational resources adequately described such as IT or other operational support, if any, from non-core team members who will be involved in implementing the intervention?

f. Are major milestones, including deliverables in all phases (pre-intervention, intervention/testing, and evaluation/improvement) reasonable, timely and appropriate?

g. Is access to needed data readily accessible at the start of intervention implementation or is there a plan for ensuring access to all required data not readily available adequately described.

3. Organizational Rationale (assessed in preliminary review)

a. Does the project team include members who have appropriate training and/or experience in quality improvement to meet the established Aims?

b. Does the identified core project team exemplify an interdisciplinary approach and address the skills, competencies, and authority needed to execute the project plan?

c. Is there meaningful patient or family involvement in this project, or where deemed to add no value, is that position justified?

4. Risks and risk mitigation

a. Does the proposal describe the potential unintended negative consequences and are the balancing measures that will be used to evaluate those negative consequences are appropriate?

b.Does the proposal describe other potential project operational challenges and/or barriers and how appropriate are the strategies to address them?

5. Overall, general impression

Is this proposal consistent with the intent of the Seed Grant Program and would it contribute to the broader healthcare field and the science of safety in diagnostic medicine?

Program Requirements

Each organization selected will be expected to:

  • Attend a cohort kick-off webinar
  • Assure appropriate team members are actively engaged in the QI Project Core Team
  • Demonstrate ongoing leadership commitment by an Executive Sponsor
  • Submit bi-monthly status reports
  • Submit formal six-month mid-project and year-end final reports
  • Participate in quarterly calls
  • Participate in the online community
  • Attend two annual QI Summits and SIDM annual conferences
  • Ensure the IRB is aware of the proposed project, if required by your organization, and appropriate authorization is obtained prior to the start of the project.

Program Support

  • SIDM will provide a community for grantees to:
    • Support shared learning across sites as challenges and barriers are identified by individual QI teams
    • Allow participating sites to share documents and engage with the SIDM QI Program Manager who will act as a virtual improvement advisor to the community for the lifecycle of the program.
  • Two QI Summits to be held mid-way and at the end of the Cohort year will provide an opportunity for the grantees to present status reports on their projects and obtain feedback from other grantees, peer judges, members of SIDM’s Board, Performance Improvement Committee and Grant Review Committee.
  • Educational webinars on QI techniques applied to the diagnostic field will be made available as needed
  • Limited consultative support will be made available through ad hoc calls to help grantees overcome potential QI barriers

Frequently Asked Questions

Grantee Projects

SIDM has issued the second grant round, totaling $3 million over three years, as part of the organization’s DxQI Seed Grant Program. Organizations will receive awards up to $50,000 to test interventions to improve the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of diagnoses. Learn more about the:

2021 Grantees | 2020 Grantees

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Thank You to Our Grant Reiew Committee and Peer Judge Committee 2022

*Organizations are shown for identification purposes only.

Grant Review Committee 2022
Brian Mittman
Carole Guinane
Doug Salvador
Gordy Schiff
Jeff Brown
Michael Friedman
Roger Gildersleeve
Sarah Sampsel
Suz Schrandt
Peer Judge Committee 2022
Claire Sachs 
Claudia Butler 
Dan Berg 
Desiree Collins-Bradley 
Divvy Uphadhyay 
Donna Saxton 
Gail Miller 
Gwen Mayes 
Harry Hoar 
Helen Haskell 
Ingrid Black 
Jana Rojas 
Karen Harris 
Karen Johnson 
Kirti Joshi 
Kristie Burnette 
Laura Evans 
Marie Jaffe 
Mike Lynch
Nelson Toussaint 
Ramsey Abdallah 
Vonda Vaden-Bates