Meaningful Use Communications and Collaboration: Working with State Medicaid

Physicians’ practices and hospitals in your region stand to gain financially when they comply with Meaningful Use—they’ll be eligible for Medicaid reimbursements.

And now, Public Health professionals are setting the groundwork that will make these reimbursements possible. Before valuable data can be collected from physicians and hospitals, a pipeline needs to be established for information flow—and that begins with a conversation between Public Health and the state Medicaid liaison.

Most of the time, state Medicaid will have a process created in compliance with the federal Meaningful Use guidelines. But it’s important that Public Health understand the process—and where all of the pieces fit together.

HMS has created a list of questions that will help Public Health professionals to better communicate with state Medicaid—ensuring that the implementation process goes as smoothly as possible:

1. Will state Medicaid be the agency responsible for determining and communicating which medical providers are in compliance with Syndromic Surveillance and Meaningful Use?
2. Or will the Public Health Department be required to make these determinations and communicate the information to state Medicaid?
3. What will the process be to communicate compliance information?
4. If the Public Health Department is determining compliance, has the department established a policy Stage 1 Meaningful Use compliance? This may include a menu set of immunizations, lab reporting, and syndromic surveillance.
5. Has the policy for granting credit to providers for compliance with meaningful use been established?

Gaining answers to these fundamental questions will help Public Health professionals to steer Meaningful Use implementation. For more information on working through the challenges of Meaningful Use implementation, please request a digital copy of our Meaningful Use Planning Guide.