MX July Newsletter

A monthly roundup of news and updates from MX

July 2022 Edition

A Message From Our New CEO, Erica Galvez

It is a true honor and privilege to serve as Manifest MedEx’s Chief Executive Officer! I am humbled by and grateful for the opportunity to lead this mission-driven organization as it continues providing critical infrastructure for health data exchange across the state.

Lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic coupled with the transformative aspirations of the state’s CalAIM program highlight now more than ever the importance of timely, complete, and usable data for population health management, health equity, and public health statewide. The CalHHS Data Sharing Framework and statewide requirements for data sharing by 2024 are important supports for these priorities, and MX remains committed to working alongside all California stakeholders, including providers, health plans, counties, and the state to improve health care quality, lower costs, and enhance the health of all Californians.

At MX, we believe that achieving optimal health and health equity across populations requires more than just talk.  It requires data-driven action, and we thank you for partnering with us to put data to work for your patients and members. I look forward to our ongoing partnership with each of you and personal meetings with many of you in the coming weeks and months.

Warmest Regards,

Erica Galvez, CEO, Manifest MedEx

Visit our website for the full press release.

MX Welcomes New Participants

Last month, Manifest MedEx partnered with 33 new ambulatory care providers!  With 129 new ambulatory providers in 2022 and more than 1800 participating in the MX network, California healthcare providers continue making the commitment to working together for the benefit of all their patients.  We are grateful to be a part of this collaborative approach to health data access and look forward to connecting with more ambulatory care partners.
MX is pleased to welcome Brown and Toland Physicians, a Bay Area network of over 2700 physicians, to our network! Brown and Toland Physicians are a diverse community of doctors and health care professionals bound together by a single vision: to partner with patients to deliver the best care possible. Brown and Toland will now have access to the rich ADT, CCDA data, and NCQA aggregated data for HEDIS reporting for selected members.
We also want to welcome Pair Team, a new IPA expanding its reach into California’s Inland Empire.  They have committed to utilizing medical data to improve patient care, achieve positive outcomes, and simplify patient access to their providers.  Pair Team helps providers, “ingest and monitor EMR data and prioritize outreach and scheduling based on impact to reimbursements and quality measures.”  We are excited about our partnership with Pair Team and the positive impact we can make together with their healthcare providers on their patients.

Participant Bright Spot

Health plans increasingly rely on a broad scope of clinical data to help improve care transitions, identify and address gaps in preventive care to improve quality, and provide more seamless and personalized care for their members. Anthem Blue Cross (Anthem), California’s second largest health plan serving more than 8 million members, and Manifest MedEx (MX), California’s largest independent nonprofit health data network, joined forces in 2018 to better combine and deliver crucial health information.

Providing a platform for health plans to better enable care providers to access and exchange this clinical data in real-time is at the core of the joint effort between MX and Anthem in California. Anthem is a leader when it comes to scaling digital solutions that integrate tools and data between health plans and providers. Integrated solutions like MX—through which health plans and providers can exchange and analyze data in real time—can simplify clinical and administrative transactions, enhance privacy, and yield better data for consumer outcomes.

Learn how Manifest MedEx and Anthem Blue Cross partner together to improve care coordination, streamline in-patient utilization management review, and provide a seamless member experience on our website.

California's Data Exchange Framework Released

On July 5th, the California Health and Human Services Agency (CalHHS) released the final Data Exchange Framework, associated Data Sharing Agreement (DSA), and the initial set of Policies and Procedures (P&Ps). This is the culmination of over nine months of stakeholder discussions and recommendations to CalHHS, including consistent input from MX, that we have chronicled through our News and Perspective recaps.

It also puts the Golden State on track to meet its obligations under Assembly Bill 133. Under that law, health plans and most health care providers in California must sign the DSA on or before January 31, 2023, and begin sharing data with other participants in the following year. This includes:

  • Responding to requests for, exchanging, and/or making available health and social service information related to treatment, payment, some health care operations, and public health activities;
  • Sharing (at a minimum) data elements within the United States Core Data for Interoperability, and federal Interoperability and Patient Access regulations for public programs;
  • The first batch of P&Ps permit providers and health plans to use various technology solutions to meet the data sharing mandate—including Qualified Health Information Organizations that will be designated by the state to serve as data exchange intermediaries.

MX is excited to become a Qualified HIO and embark with all our participants on this long-awaited milestone. We also look forward to being involved in the next phase of P&P development and implementation with CalHHS and stakeholders.

Missed the recap of the last DxF meeting? You can find it on our website, as well as ways to keep up with our monthly newsletters for analysis, updates, and other resources.

MX July Webinar

Have you registered for our upcoming webinar?

COVID-19 has highlighted the deep disparities in health and health access plaguing our communities. It has also underscored that data gaps perpetuate inequities and block progress. Improving health equity requires quicker insights and better data. To address these issues, and succeed in California’s bold Medicaid transformation plans, we will need deeper integration, more seamless transitions, and faster intervention, all enabled by sharing, integrating, and using data in new ways and at scale.

What’s working? Where are the challenges? How do we move forward in California at this pivotal moment in time, with CalAIM underway and the AB 133 requirements to share data just around the corner?

Join us for this timely and important discussion with our panel of experts:

  • Abner Mason, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, SameSky Health (moderator)
  • Adimika Arthur, Executive Director, Health Tech4 Medicaid
  • Lakshmi Dhanvanthari, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Health Plan of San Joaquin
  • Karen Larsen, Chief Executive Officer, The Steinberg Institute

You can register and share the link to the webinar here. We look forward to seeing you there!

News and Events

Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a Collaboration with the DirectTrust Summit

Join us this August at the Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a Collaboration with the DirectTrust Summit! The four-day conference will include nationally recognized health care thought leaders and bring together peers from across the country to connect, share experiences, and learn – together.

Manifest MedEx CEO, Erica Galvez, Abner Mason, CEO & Founder of SameSky Health, and both Cheron Vail, Ph.D., Chief Information Officer, and Lakshmi Dhanvanthari, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Health Plan of San Joaquin will be presenting a session on "Tackling Health Equity with Data Innovation and Partnerships" on August 23, 2022 from 9:15 am - 10:00 am PST.

Learn more about the event and how to register here!

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Accessing health care in California can be a hurdle in itself. For our low-income, unhoused and vulnerable citizens, many of whom make up the 14 million Californians enrolled in Medi-Cal, finding and returning regularly to a usual source of care can be challenging. In my region of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, about 30% of our population live in an official Health Professional Shortage Area. People residing in the high desert and other communities may not be seen and supported when it matters most for their health.

Our state’s policy reforms have set out to repair this. The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) issued a draft of their Population Health Management Strategy and Roadmap, and have emphasized the health and well-being of people through prevention, early identification and optimization. It’s a big step forward in the right direction, and we’re excited to see the state make this important investment. And to make this work and implement the vision of DHCS, we must harness the opportunity to act on the promise of a longitudinal patient record.

Read the full article by Jarrod McNaughton, CEO, Inland Empire Health Plan and Chairman of the Board, Manifest MedEx, published in State of Reform.

Network Growth

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New data sources available on MX today:

CCDAs from the following 6 participants:

Clovis Unified School District (CUSD) miCare Health Center
M. Nieves Gutierrez-Go, M.D., Inc.
Metro Family Physicians Medical Group, Inc.
North Orange County Regional Health Foundation
Sarasa Kumar, M.D., Inc.
TeleMed2U, Inc.

Lab data from the following 21 participants:

Avocado Medical Clinic (2 locations)
Becker Pediatric Medical Corp.
Blessing Community Health Center
Evangeline A. Gimbel, M.D.
Helena O. Mba, M.D., Inc.
Inland Behavioral and Health Services, Inc.
Inland Pediatrics, Inc.
James J. Wu Medical Corp
Luther Mangoba, M.D., Inc.
M. Nieves Gutierrez-Go, M.D., Inc.
Qazi Medical Group, Inc. (2 locations)
Susan Biegel, M.D.
Tri-State Community Healthcare Center (3 locations)
Ultimate Medical Practice
Valley Comprehensive Medical Group
West Point Medical Group
Yvonne D'Sylva M.D., Inc.

Have questions or want to learn more? We're here to help. Reach out.

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