Electronic Health Reporter

Today MedeAnalytics and the Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) announced 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 MedeAnalytics and Epic to provide Medicaid data to the state’s largest provider of care to Medicaid patients, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC).

The connection is powered by MedeAnalytics, a leader in healthcare analytics.
This accomplishment means 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 Dr. John Showalter, chief health information officer of UMMC.

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.

“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.

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.

“After years of working with our technology partners to build a foundation consisting of an EMPI and clinical data repository, we can now instantly share patient summaries with external stakeholders, such as UMMC. This real-time access to beneficiary data will improve insight into beneficiary health trends, empower better care decisions and much more,” said Rita Rutland, DOM deputy administrator of information technology management.

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.”

The benefits of real-time access to beneficiary data for DOM and UMMC include:
• Emergency room care
o Urgent care treatment decisions are more informed with a complete patient record, including an allergies list.
o The cause and frequency of visits is readily available to help providers prevent future unnecessary readmissions.
• Case management
o Medicaid utilization and remaining benefits can be quickly accessed.
o Referrals for additional services are easily identified.
• Care Management
o Immunization records and alerts will ensure beneficiaries are receiving the most up-to-date care.
o Tobacco use information is available to providers.

“Mississippi DOM continues to be a model agency for the nation and it has been a great privilege to partner with them over the years to set the building blocks for clinical data exchange,” said Andrew Hurd, MedeAnalytics CEO. “By standardizing the EMPI and extending this information to the provider portal, Medicaid beneficiaries will benefit from having their complete medical history available at the point of care, which will improve both safety and care outcomes.”
About Mississippi Division of Medicaid

Medicaid is a state and federal program created by the Social Security Amendments of 1965 (PL 89-97), authorized by Title XIX of the Social Security Act to provide health coverage for eligible, low income populations. In 1969, Medicaid was enacted by the Mississippi Legislature. All 50 states, five territories of the United States and District of Columbia participate in this voluntary matching program. The mission of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid is to responsibly provide access to quality health coverage for vulnerable Mississippians by conducting operations with accountability, consistency and respect.

About University of Mississippi Medical Center
The University of Mississippi Medical Center, located in Jackson, is the state’s only academic health science center. UMMC includes six health science schools: medicine, nursing, dentistry, health related professions, graduate studies and pharmacy. (The School of Pharmacy is headquartered on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford.) Enrollment in all programs is more than 3,000 students.

The Medical Center’s missions are to improve the lives of Mississippians by educating tomorrow’s health-care professionals, by conducting health sciences research, and by providing cutting-edge patient care. A major goal of the Medical Center is the elimination of differences in health status of Mississippians based on race, geography, income or social status.

About MedeAnalytics
MedeAnalytics provides evidence-based insights to solve a real problem that plagues healthcare – how to use the immense amount of patient data collected along the care continuum to deliver cost-effective care and promote a healthier population. Its analytics platform delivers intelligence that helps healthcare organizations detect their greatest areas of risk and identify opportunities to improve their financial health. It empowers providers and payers to collaborate and use data to strengthen their operations and improve the quality of care. MedeAnalytics’ cloud-based tools have been used to uncover business insights for over 1,500 healthcare organizations across the United States and United Kingdom. The company has also been named one of Modern Healthcare’s top 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare for 2014 and 2015.