SLI (then SysTest Labs) provided Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) services to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) for the implementation and operation of a $9.8 million Electronic Health Record (EHR) and e-Prescribing solution, which includes:

• Web portal access for Medicaid providers to obtain an EHR based on Medicaid medical and prescription claims data
• Web-based e-Prescribing system
• Web portal access for Medicaid providers to obtain hospital discharge information based on Medicaid claims

The end users of the MEHRS/eScript system are authorized and authenticated Mississippi Medicaid providers and MEHRS/eScript Administrators, who will be granted access to a web portal that offers clinical and administrative data about Mississippi DOM beneficiaries.  Additionally, the providers will be able to prescribe electronically, gain insight into their own practice through Shared Health’s Patient Population Manager and Disease & Wellness Registry applications, and be able to enter updates to the clinical repository, including new patients, medications, vital signs, immunizations, and allergies.

The benefits to implementing the MEHRS/eScript system are numerous, but all share a common theme – improved care for the beneficiary while concurrently reducing the cost of that care.  Online access to medical claims and pharmacy claims data offers information to the provider that the beneficiary may be unable to provide, better positioning the provider to identify and treat the beneficiary’s illness, reducing waste and duplicated effort.  Electronic prescribing is a less costly and more efficient use of provider time, and reduces potential errors in deciphering hand written prescriptions at the pharmacy.  Patient Population Manager and Disease & Wellness Registry allow a provider to look across his beneficiary population and quickly identify those beneficiaries whose prior care has deviated from evidence-based guidelines, and to subsequently drill down to the beneficiary level to assist in managing the care for those beneficiaries with one or more predefined disease conditions.

As Mississippi’s IV&V partner, SLI's primary services include:

• Project Oversight.  We reviewed all project planning and management plan deliverables for the project and provided input to the state on those plans completeness and adequacy for the areas they were intended to address. Our IV&V Project Manager also attended weekly project management and project work plan meetings, as well as the monthly Executive Steering Committee.  The focus of the project oversight work was to identify risk and issues as quickly as possible and to document those risks and issues in terms of the importance and impact on the project.  Additionally all risk and issues identified also included recommended actions and mitigation strategies. In this area SLI also provided various white papers to DOM management addressing specific areas of project activity that were problematic and needed more documentation and analysis.  Finally, We provided a monthly project status report directly to the senior management of DOM.  The purpose of this monthly report was to provide an independent assessment of the progress and status of the DDI vendor’s progress.
• System and Integration Test Review.  SLI conducted detail assessment and analysis of the system and integration test methodologies, practices and outcomes of the DDI vendors test activities.  Our IV&V Team prepared detail weekly reports throughout this test phase with an analysis of the DDI’s activities and reports for the week.
• User Acceptance Test Support.  SLI  assisted the state in developing User Acceptance Test (UAT) plans and UAT test cases. Assisted the state in the execution of UAT by providing subject matter experts to help conduct UAT, reviewed outputs of test, defined and tracked defects and participated in a defect management board made up the state and DDI vendor staff.
• Deliverable Review Reports.  SLI  IV&V Team created detailed Deliverable Reveiew Reports (DRR) documents is to ensure  processes and tasks undertaken by the MEHRS/eScript Implemenation Contractor were configured to the MEHRS/eScript system were clearly, thoroughly, and consistently documented.  Each document reviewed was assessed in terms of the standards for clarity and specificity, completeness, quality, risk, and adherence to standards and criteria.  These attributes measured by use of our quality checklists.   We completed a total of (20) twenty formal Deliverable Review Reports (DRR) for DOM over a one-year contract period.  These assessment reports analyzed and reported on the contents, approach, and results of the multiple deliverables produced by the EHR Contractor while implementing the MEHRS/eScript system. 
  Additionally, SLI completed the following quality documents to support the project:  Quality Management Plan, Requirements Traceability Matrix, and Master Test Plan.
  In addition to producing the formal DRR documents to assess the quality of the MEHRS/eScript Contractor deliverables, SLI delivered two more work products for DOM that facilitate the IV&V assessment of the project.  These are a Quality Management Plan (QMP) and a Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM).  The QMP is an overarching document to support the tasks and schedule of the IV&V Team.

 The MEHRS/eScript system went live June 2010 and the IV&V team completed at the end of July 2010.