An overview of MITA 3.0

Deltek Analyst Kate Tussey reports.

A lot has changed in the Medicaid program since 1965. In the last few years alone, several legislative initiatives have changed the direction and policies of the Medicaid community, including (but not limited to): the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA), the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Besides changing policies, most states are burdened by legacy Medicaid management information systems (MMIS), struggling to keep up with recent mandates to integrate with health insurance exchanges (HIX) and health information exchanges (HIE).

Luckily for states and vendors, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the long-awaited draft of the Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) 3.0 document in early November 2011. The MITA initiative was first introduced back in March 2006 with the goal of establishing national guidelines for processes and technologies to improve state administration of Medicaid programs. MITA had several objectives in mind, including:

• Develop integrated systems with seamless communication to achieve Medicaid goals through interoperability and common standards.
• Promote flexibility, adaptability, and shorten response time to program and technology changes.
• Promote an enterprise view that supports technologies aligned with Medicaid business processes and technologies.
• Provide data that is accurate, timely, and easily accessible to support business analysis and decision-making for program administration and effective health care management.
• Coordination with public health partners.
• Provide performance measurement for accountability and planning

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