The “MS Medicaid Provider Bulletin” produced by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) https://medicaid.ms.gov reports that the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) https://www.umc.edu is gradually expanding different telehealth services such as telemergency. The plan is to host other telehealth services from psychiatry to radiology to diabetes monitoring to help the many Medicaid beneficiaries in the state.
Although UMMC did not invent telehealth, they were one of the first medical centers to use the technology. There was the need to stretch and spread the UMMC’s medical expertise across the state, since Mississippi is a very rural state with chronic health disparities that can create problems for residents who need to access healthcare.
Last year, the DOM began to reimburse healthcare providers for telehealth and became the first Medicaid program in the country to have a separately reimbursable State Plan for telehealth services. DOM was then able to reimburse both the rural hospital caregiver as well as the provider.
As reported by Dr. David Dzielak MD, Executive Director for the Division of Medicaid, “In order to have a real impact on the health of our beneficiaries, we need to know their baseline conditions. Up until now, the only information available was from beneficiaries’ claims data.
Analyzing data can reveal long-term trends, disease states, treatments, and outcomes for different populations around the state. Early in 2016, DOM entered into a partnership with UMMC to become the first agency of its kind to exchange beneficiary claims data within a health system.
DOM’s healthcare data analysis vendor MedeAnalytics www.medeanalytics.com created a portal which enables UMMC’s EHR system, Epic to access clinical information on Medicaid beneficiaries.
MedeAnalytics established and standardized an Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) for the Division of Medicaid to manage patient records. This paved the way for standardization of Medicaid’s EMPI to support a clinical data interface with almost any health system in the state.
MedeAnalytics work on the integration of the clinical data with UMMC’s electronic patient records is part of a three year $10 million contract between MedeAnalytics and the state’s Medicaid division.
Go to www.ms-medicaid.com/msenvision click on Current Bulletin to read the MA Medicaid provider Bulletin.