Today, the District of Columbia Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF) announces that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) certified the implementation of the District’s Medicaid Data Warehouse (MDW). This certification affirms federal financial participation of 75% of the costs associated with the Medicaid Data Warehouse. The MDW was launched on September 30, 2017, and certified by CMS following a demonstration and comprehensive reviewof the system's viability and capabilities.

The MDW is a ground-breaking system that offers enhanced functionality to complete analyses that once took days but can now be compressed into a matter of minutes, by providing rapid access to more than a decade of historical claims data, interactive reports, and dashboards that can be quickly manipulated to analyze data. The MDW will replace DHCF’s legacy system, which could no longer support efficient data analysis.

“Our MDW team has diligently worked to create a highly sophisticated Medicaid Data Warehouse system that substantially upgrades our data analysis capabilities,” said Wayne Turnage, Interim Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services and Director of the Department of Health Care Finance. “The certification from CMS ensures that we can continue to maintain the functionality and integrity of our new MDW."

The District’s Medicaid Data Warehouse is an important part of the District's new State Medicaid Health IT Plan (SMHP), which establishes a 5-year roadmap for using health information technology to connect District residents, providers, and public entities with real-time information to improve health services and the patient-provider experience. The SMHP is the culmination of a multi-agency effort to better understand the health IT needs of key District stakeholders,including Medicaid beneficiaries and providers--and the MDW supports the goals of the SMHP by providing unprecedented access to Medicaid data and data analysis tools.

“The District’s Medicaid Data Warehouse will allow the District to collect and classify all Medicaid data under one umbrella," said DHCF Senior Deputy Director/Medicaid Director Melisa Byrd. “The real-time data collected and stored in the Medicaid Data Warehouse will assist us in analyzing and creating Medicaid programs that best meet the needs of our Medicaid beneficiaries.”

To view the District's SMHP and the Health IT initiatives planned to enhance how the health care community providesservices to District residents, please go to: https://dhcf.dc.gov/hitroadmap.

The Department of Health Care Finance is the District’s State Medicaid Agency. The mission of the Department of Health Care Finance is to improve health outcomes by providing access to comprehensive, cost-effective and quality healthcare services for residents of the District of Columbia. In addition to the Medicaid program, DHCF also administers insurance programs for immigrant children, the State Child Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP or CHIP) and Medical Charities (a locally funded program). For more on DHCF, please visit https://dhcf.dc.gov/.