January 26-27, 2010

Lively discussion about interoperability, its returns, and its hurdles characterized the first in-person Health and Human Services Interoperability Advisory Committee (HHSIAC) conference, held at Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County Human Services Center on January 26th and 27th. Sixteen people participated in the conference, reviewing three white papers and sharing their diverse opinions and experiences from working in the fields of Medicaid, government initiatives, and health and human services.

On the first day of the conference, committee chair Dr. Allan Collautt welcomed the conference attendees and invited their input on the committee’s “Enhancing the MITA Framework” white paper, with its suggestions about how to build interoperability more systematically into the 79 Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) business processes. The committee agreed that finding use cases would make the white paper more understandable and would increase its value. Several conference attendees agreed to find use cases to include in the paper. Attendees also agreed that a better understanding of what related groups and committees are doing would be of substantial benefit so that the committee may build on interoperability standards that these groups are developing.

During the next conference session, the group discussed the white paper focused on how to measure return on investment (ROI) for an interoperability initiative. The committee recognized that it would be difficult to quantify increased consumer satisfaction resulting from interoperability, while quantifying more efficient service delivery and lower costs seemed more straightforward. The committee was encouraged to present evidence to defend the ROI of interoperability in the white paper. The committee discussed the subject of re-investing cost savings from interoperability back into systems of care. Some conference attendees noted that higher levels of governments often require human services agencies to reduce costs, but they rarely fund these agencies’ efforts toward this goal, and they generally keep the savings the agencies have achieved.

For the final session of the day, the committee considered the “Horizontal Interoperability” white paper, looking at the need to establish a governing entity to coordinate the efforts of cooperating organizations. The committee considered a proposal that the governing entity define and enforce rules for interaction, especially for data sharing, among the agencies. These rules would not dictate how to carry out the agencies’ activities, but they would provide guidelines within which the agencies can collaborate.

On the second day of the conference, the committee developed goals for making further progress, such as creating online task lists and discussion threads, presenting at the 2010 Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMIS) conference, and sharing ideas with leaders of the MITA initiative. In its future meetings, the committee will continue to consider how to quantify the benefits of interoperable solutions, how to obtain funding for interoperability projects and then re-invest savings to foster greater efficiency, and how to determine access rights to confidential data.

Visit the HHSIAC website at www.hhsiac.org.