MDPHNet Data Partner Experience PopMedNet User Group July 28, 2015

MLCHC Overview Established in 1972, the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers is the state’s Primary Care Association and serves 49 community health centers with more than 285 total access sites and over 800,000 people. Azara DRVS reporting platform – centralized data warehouse 26 Community Health Center subscribers 350,000 active patients 6 EMR platforms

Relevant CHC Facts CHCs all independent with separate IT and leadership structures CHCs primarily in medically underserved areas CHCs have strong focus on community needs and commitment to improving public health Natural partnership with MA DPH

So Why Did We Start This? MDPHNet offers a way to build on CHCs relationship to DPH by improving data sharing while protecting patient privacy DRVS central repository allowed a way to connect many CHCs at once rather than implementing at individual centers

Implementation ESP Server hosted by MassLeague holds MDPHNet database Extract built by technical partner Azara Healthcare extracts data from DRVS data warehouse ESP server can also be leveraged by MassLeague for other projects – reportable conditions

Data Mapping Data mapped to ESP from DRVS internal DW structure Data already mapped from underlying EMR structures – standardized for reporting by DRVS ETL Subtle differences from center to center when using data for analytic purposes Important to validate both by high level queries and by sampling patient level detail

Role of MassLeague MassLeague participates on behalf of member centers Communicate MDPHNet updates to DRVS member centers at regular meetings Participate in regular MDPHNet advisory panel meetings Manage query approvals centrally

Lessons Re-purposing data from transactional to analytic systems isn’t always straightforward Analytic systems have to account for data provenance – different ways people in different spheres use / see data Governance of any data sharing effort is critical

Use Cases Ad Hoc querying from DPH – has taken great effort to interest people in new method for data gathering Regular scheduled reporting – weekly ILI – hard to line up to existing reporting standards Grants – using reports for evaluation and sharing of data for improvement efforts Querying by CHC providers and staff – has not been much interest (If the tool isn’t relevant, people don’t want to learn it – tool could become relevant for research projects but not if people don’t already know how to use it)

Benefits Biggest benefit get info to DPH efficiently and securely – de-identified Reduce overhead of projects by removing extra steps to share data Long term view this as preferable way to share data with DPH for wide array of projects