Florida begins electronic health record pilot program for Medicaid recipients

The system could link 25,000 patients in one county.

By Dave Hansen, AMNews staff. Dec. 17, 2007.

Washington -- Medicaid recipients in Tallahassee and surrounding Leon County are the test subjects for a bold Florida experiment: a pilot program giving them their own electronic health records.

The initiative, administered by Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration, runs from November to February 2008 and seeks to create EHRs for each of the 25,000 Medicaid recipients in Leon County, said Peter Finney, program manager of the Electronic Health Records Center of Excellence for Electronic Data Systems, a Plano, Texas, information technology corporation.

The effort, called EDS CareNetwork Solutions, is based on an existing EHR system that was created by CentriHealth, a Nashville health information company. The program collects medical information from the diagnostic and procedural codes entered for a patient's Medicaid claim and assembles these data into a single, coherent file, Finney said.

The information already is filed electronically into the state's existing Medicaid Management Information System, said Alan Strowd, bureau chief of Medicaid contract management for the state's AHCA. Up to 98% of Florida physicians who participate in Medicaid file electronically, Strowd said, creating a huge database of information.

In turn, this file will act as the foundation for an individual health record, consolidating key information such as current health records, lab results and x-rays, EDS said.

The current MMIS has existed for 18 years, Strowd said. But Florida will include only claims information from the last six to nine months as part of the pilot program. State officials will use this experience to evaluate whether a longer history would be helpful, he added.