KANSAS CITY, MO – Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (Blue KC) will roll out a new enterprise master patient index (MPI) that to enable the insurer to meet new demands for comprehensive, aggregated patient data in the health information exchange (HIE) environment.

Blue KC tapped ICW to provide the technology and oversee the implementation.

"Healthcare reform is driving significant changes in healthcare, which call for changes in the way we manage member identification," said Jane Hamerle, CIO of Blue KC. "For health plans, the need for an accurate, longitudinal understanding of members and their data over a lifetime is more important than ever, and ICW's solution will enable us to achieve this."

Hamerle added that as Blue KC has continued to grow, it has added more than 100,000 new records in 2010. This growth made the need more apparent for an MPI capable of supporting the health plan’s goal of maintaining high quality member information with the utmost confidentiality and care.

"As the largest insurer in the area, Blue KC is leading the way in technologies that protect and benefit the individuals it serves," said Jeremy Coote, CEO of ICW.

Coote said the new technology would make it possible for Blue KC to aggregate a patient's health information into one uniform view.

That this type of data aggregation can be quite challenging, Coote said. But CW's MPI solution offers strict standards-compliance and is built on technology that automates mapping of datasets to a single patient identity based on a probability-based mathematical procedure, allowing for complex matching challenges to be rapidly resolved.
 
"MPIs ensure that all connected systems always have access to current, complete and reliable master data," said Coote. "Additionally, MPIs lay the groundwork for patient-centered medical care and care coordination across the healthcare market."