CMS plans to increase data sharing among Medicaid agencies
By Mary Mosquera
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to boost data sharing among its programs that have common functions using the Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) and the nationwide health information network (NHIN).
MITA, a technology and business roadmap for Medicaid systems modernization, will provide a platform for Medicaid agencies to share data within states and across states, said Rick Friedman, director of the division of state systems in CMS’ Center for Medicaid and State Operations.
For example, CMS wants to let its various children’s programs in Medicaid and its Children’s Health Insurance Plans more easily exchange information. States administer those programs on behalf of CMS.
“Childcare agencies would like to make their systems more interoperable and pay less attention to the boundaries that we’ve created for ourselves in terms of allocating cost,” Friedman said at a Nov. 11 conference of the National Association of State Medicaid Directors.
Such information sharing would help improve the quality of care provided, he said.
CMS also wants to share information with other federal children’s health programs. Friedman will be meeting with the Agriculture Department about its Food Stamps and Women Infants and Children programs applying MITA to their systems.
CMS is working with the Connect program in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s Federal Health Architecture to produce a version of the linking software that incorporates MITA so that Medicaid and related federal and state agencies can share information.
Connect software lets healthcare organizations exchange information using standards designed for the NHIN.
To accomplish such broad sharing, state Medicaid agencies must first establish health information exchange, which CMS has accelerated through transformation grants, said Jessica Kahn, health policy analyst in the Center for Medicaid and State Operations.
The grants predate the stimulus law, which provides meaningful users of health IT with Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. CMS is sharing feedback it gets from the state Medicaid agencies with the Office of the National Health IT Coordinator, which will also be awarding grants to states for health information exchange.
