The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has awarded HP Enterprise Services a $30 million, 52-month contract to create a statewide health information exchange (HIE) and e-prescribing network, company officials announced on Wednesday.

The standalone Web-based solution will be powered by InterComponentWare's eHealth Framework and secured using role-based authentication measures. It will pull claims, demographic and other relevant information from the existing Modernized Medicaid Information System (MMIS), immunization registry and other systems to create a common patient health history for the state's three million Medicaid recipients.

HP officials say they will begin rolling out the system by mid-summer. The company will evolve the system as more health data sources become available and provide operational support throughout the course of the contract.

Scott Mack, general manager for HP's Central Region, said that Texas wanted to find innovative ways to make it as easy as possible for the state's 70,000 Medicaid providers to adopt the system into their own processes.

"The concept was to make it desirable to use and to use it in a meaningful way," he explained, noting that the system will enable Texas to cost-effectively and reliably meet the expected increases in the number of Medicaid recipients as healthcare reform legislation is implemented.

Providers can embed a system module into their practice management application so they can use it without moving off their primary system, for example, and the free online e-prescribing tool can be utilized by a provider for both Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients. The physician only has to enter the patient's name, prescription information and drugstore pickup location and then choose the payer from a drop-down menu that contains every insurance provider in the state.

The system also has an embedded rules engine that, when integrated with the patient health summary, is designed to alert the physician to any drug-to-patient condition concerns, drug-to-drug interactions, patient condition issues or insurance reimbursement issues before the prescription is transmitted.

"Currently, the alert happens on the pharmacist's end, which usually means a lot of inconvenience for the patient and extra effort and time loss for the provider," Mack says.

The system will also offer two different secure Web portals. One gives providers a full, near-real-time, summarized view of a patient's health information, including medication history, recent diagnoses and treatments, allergies and other information critical to effective and safe treatment.

A second recipient care Web portal will allow Medicaid members to securely access their personal health information and check program eligibility. The system has built-in automated messaging capabilities to push out reminders to Medicaid members about needed immunizations, screening recommendations, unfilled prescriptions, appointment scheduling and other preventative measures.

Mack said the member portal is designed to keep patients informed and better able to manage their own health, as well as their family's health.

As part of the contract, HP will also create and distribute permanent, magnetic-stripe Medicaid identification cards that can be swiped at a provider's office for automated eligibility verification, Mack said. The task will replace the state's current and expensive process of sending out monthly paper cards and is expected to pay for itself in less than three years.