Promoting Interoperability

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) declared readiness for all four Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) public health reporting use cases, effective Jan. 1, 2022.

Health care system and independent hospital partners working toward full reimbursement for Medicare services need to actively engage with all four of these use cases:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Syndromic Surveillance Program (CDC NSSP)
• Electronic case reporting (eCR)
• Electronic laboratory reporting (ELR)
• Immunization reporting (MIIC)
  

MDH has contracted with Koble Minnesota, a State-certified Health Information Organization (HIO), to help support interoperability implementation between MDH programs and the external partners that have the information needed to perform public health work. The NSSP use case in particular requires submission through the HIO; however; other use cases may also be sent via Koble to increase value and reduce administrative burden for public health reporting.

Additional information, including the Koble participation agreement and contact information, can be found at Koble Minnesota.

MDH will launch an electronic registration and engagement tracking tool in late 2022 or early 2023. Until then, partners should use the MDH Interoperability Checklist to document their intent to engage in submission of data; email this form to health.dsi@state.mn.us when completed.

For 2022, MDH is trying out a different attestation format, which does not require submitting letters. This is thanks to suggestions from external partners with facilities in other states.

MDH Data Strategy and Interoperability will provide a downloadable PDF that contains the names of facilities that report on the MDH Interoperability Checklist their intent to engage in submission of data and the status of public health reporting use cases.

Check this webpage for updates about active engagement and documentation for attestation. In addition to the four required CMS public health reporting use cases, MDH also offers three public health registries. One of the following may be used for five CMS bonus points:

• Minnesota cancer reporting
• MNScreen
• Blood lead reporting