Arkansas' approach to Medicaid management

The Decision Support System drives meaningful improvements

Backbone for key components of the state’s $9B program

Medicaid provides health care coverage for more than one-third of Arkansas residents. Arkansas relies heavily on an enterprise data warehouse called the Decision Support System (DSS). DSS helps manage, assess, monitor and measure the program’s effectiveness and helps to improve health outcomes.

The data and analytical capabilities of the DSS have produced meaningful results for Arkansas Medicaid in the following areas:

• Medicaid
• Payment improvement that bases physician payment on overall quality of care and health outcomes
• Legislative reporting

Proactively address data quality issues

One of many examples of how DSS has helped Arkansas Medicaid program is the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) Early Warning System. This tool was created to help improve performance on the state’s monthly CMS Outcomes-Based Assessment.

The Early Warning System runs weekly data quality audits to find abnormalities or errors early in the process. This helps the state resolve issues before they hit the official CMS assessment.

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