Mississippi's Division of Medicaid will sponsor web-based EMRs for the approximately 600,000 state residents enrolled in the low-income insurance program. The system will include e-prescribing, clinical decision support and access to hospital discharge records, Health Data Management reports, though the Medicaid agency initially will populate the records with payer data on lab test results, medications, immunizations and allergies. We at FierceEMR remain skeptical of EMRs with data from billing claims, particularly in the wake of the well-publicized problems at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center earlier this year.
In any case, Shared Health, a company founded by BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, will provide the EMR and health information exchange software for the program. SharedHealth has records of nearly 3 million Medicaid and Blues enrollees in an HIE network in Tennessee, and the Mississippi deal marks its first expansion outside its home state.
For further information:
- see this Health Data Management story
- read the Shared Health press release