Work underway to develop claims database

PORTLAND, Me. – Work has begun on the first step in the development of the R.I. All-Payer Claims Database, building the aggregation component of the database, Onpoint Health Data, the Maine firm awarded the contract through a competitive bidding process, announced on Nov. 13.
The R.I. All-Payer Claims Database is being developed as a statewide tool that will systematically collect, cleanse, and standardize health care claims data from private and public payers, including Medicaid and Medicare.
The new database will operate under the authority of the R.I. Department of Health in partnership with then R.I. Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner, the R.I. Health Insurance Benefits Exchange, and the state’s Medicaid program administered by the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Onpoint Health Data’s contract for $1.143 million was awarded in February and signed in August, and runs until Dec. 31, 2014.
Tricia Leddy, the executive director of the Office of Health Policy and Reform at the R/I. Department Health, is coordinating the work on the development of the database.
The creation of the new database will help to drive health care improvement and reform metrics efforts in Rhode Island, including those mandated by the national health care reform law.
“This is an exciting collaboration for Onpoint,” said James Harrison, president and CEO of Onpoint. “Our team will be leveraging a decade’s worth of all-payer claims database experience to provide Rhode Island and its health plans with a state-of-the-art system that has been carefully designed to deliver reliable data at the most granular levels while safeguarding patient privacy.”
R.I. Health Insurance Commissioner Christopher F. Koller said that the R.I. All-Payer Claims Database will be “a source of claims information from all payers – Medicaid, Medicare and the commercial insurers – that will be in one place.”
Onpoint Health Data, which has built several similar databases in work with the states of Minnestota, Maine and Vermont, is building the aggregation database, taking in multiple sources of data, standardizing them, ensuring data quality thresholds, according to Harrington.
Once this part of the database is completed, the state of Rhode Island will contract with a firm to build and conduct the analytical engine and a third firm to be responsible for reporting mechanisms, according to Harrington.