Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference (MESC) 2017

The annual Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference (formerly known as the MMIS Conference) brings together thought leaders from the public and private sectors to share ideas and information related to Medicaid systems and initiatives. It includes more than 1,500 participants and will have more than 100 sessions. This year's conference is particularly important as many of the presentations will be focusing on Medicaid's open source/modular strategy for modernizing Medicaid's platforms and integrating with health information solutions.

There are some 50 panels that would be specially of interest to Open Health News readers. One of the key presentations is the work that is being done to develop a prototype of an Open Source Provider Screening Module (PSM) as a proof of concept for modular development. This project will serve as an example for developing and improving medicaid IT technologies using open source development approaches. During the panel there will be a discussion around how the PSM module fits into a Medicaid Enterprise Reference Architecture. Additional discussions will take place governance of open source code developoment, implementation, forked development, licensing and integration. Feedback from pilot states that were selected for this effort will be provided This session takes place on Wednesday, August 16 at 11:00 AM, Room 310. 

Another presentation centers around the efforts of the MITA TAC to building a Proof of Concept (PoC) framework that will support Medicaid modularity, called MITAcore. The intent of this framework is to connect Medicaid modules securely to cloud based services and use state of the art Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) APIs to connect Medicaid modules to external data, external business processes and most importantly to connect Medicaid modules together in a secure manner. This session will consist of three segments, a description of the MITAcore framework by the MITA TAC, a description of how the CAQH provider repository and other provider repositories can be used in modules by accessing that repository through MITAcore and a high-level overview of FHIR. In addition to CAQH Provider directory information through FHIR the PoC will be demonstrating howBlockchain can be used within the Medicaid Enterprise to significantly enhance the foundation of the MMIS. This session will take place on Wednesday at  9:00 AM in Room 307. Speakers include Dave Walsh from MITA TAC, Karen Hale, from KMH Associates, Henry Chao from Sparksoft and Andrew Laing from the State of Vermont.

While on the subject of FHIR and Blockchain, there will be an entire session on the potential of Blockchain in the Medicaid IT platform for data exchange, combatting fraud and abuse, disease management, care coordination, and many other critical Medicaid functions! Among some of the developments that will be discussed is that of Hashed Health which is convening Proof of Concept (POC) participants across multiple industries, including healthcare. Illinois recently announced a consortium of Illinois state and county agencies, known as the Illinois Blockchain Initiative, who will collaborate to explore innovations presented by Blockchain and distributed ledger technology. Delaware plans to deploy a distributed ledger platform to develop a POC for utilizing smart prior authorizations (PAs) to improve efficiencies for providers and payers enabling timely delivery of critical healthcare services. This session takes place on Friday, August 18 at 9:30 AM in Room 307.

An important topic of discussion is how to leverage the Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) Standard to Coordinate Care and Improve Outcomes for Medicaid Beneficiaries. The states of Mississippi and Michigan have both implemented innovative ways to use the C-CDA to share clinical and administrative information to improve the quality and coordination of care for Medicaid beneficiaries. In this session, the Mississippi Division of Medicaid will discuss how the C-CDA is being used for real-time, bi-directional exchange of clinical summaries between the largest Medicaid provider’s electronic health record (EHR) and the Medicaid Program’s clinical data repository. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) will discuss how the dual eligible beneficiaries’ care teams use the C-CDA to share clinical information for better coordination of care. The presentations will cover the states’ C-CDA projects from initial planning through implementation, and future plans for leveraging the C-CDA standard. This presentation takes place on Thursday, August 17 at 2:15 PM, Room 309.

And beyond these there will be more than 100 other sessions.