The Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) and MedeAnalytics are attesting that DOM has become the nation's first Medicaid agency to send and receive clinical data in real-time with a health system using the Epic medical records system.
The agency worked with Emeryville, Calif.-based data and analytics company MedeAnalytics and the Verona, Wis.-based health IT giant Epic to provide Medicaid data to the state's largest provider of care to Medicaid patients, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). MedeAnalytics powered the connection.
Officials say that UMMC doctors can now review the electronic medical history of DOM patients, allowing them to quickly make better-informed decisions. "Giving doctors and nurses access to important information such as medications, diagnoses and allergies ensures that they can make the best care decisions for Medicaid patients," said John Showalter, M.D., chief health information officer of UMMC, said in a statement.
MedeAnalytics established and standardized DOM's Medicaid Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI). The standardized EMPI, a multi-year initiative, serves as the core identity management service to allow easy management of a patient's longitudinal record improving patient safety and care.
MedeAnalytics first helped DOM lay the groundwork for this effort by creating an EMPI and single patient identifier in 2014. They accomplished this by analyzing and de-duplicating more than a decade of medical records from 2.3 million Medicaid beneficiaries. The process resulted in a unique longitudinal patient record for over 750,000 Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) beneficiaries. MedeAnalytics worked with DOM to make the data accessible through a Medicaid provider portal, then began the next phase of the project: standardization of the Medicaid clinical EMPI to support a clinical data interface with external stakeholders, according to officials.
"As part of our commitment to provide quality health coverage for vulnerable Mississippians, we are proud to have established one of the nation's first interfaces between Medicaid and Epic to share Medicaid clinical data with the state's largest Medicaid provider," said David J. Dzielak, executive director of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid.
Now, DOM and UMMC can interact to share Consolidated-Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) patient summaries through UMMC's Epic electronic health record (EHR). MedeAnalytics expects to receive approximately 3,500 clinical inquiries per day from UMMC and will send the corresponding clinical summaries for Medicaid beneficiaries in response.
"We are excited to have achieved this level of interoperability. Securely exchanging our patients' data with Medicaid advances our mission to provide the safest, most advanced care for patients across the region," said Dr. Showalter. "With the ability to access DOM's patient information at the point of care, we are not only improving patient safety, but are also helping to ensure that the beneficiary's longitudinal record is always current."
