November 06, 2014 -- Rhode Island’s APCD – a statewide initiative for which Onpoint integrates commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare data – is featured in a new article from Government Health IT. The piece examines two APCD-based efforts to shed greater light on healthcare price transparency, focusing specifically on the state-run APCD in Rhode Island and parallel work being undertaken on the West Coast by the University of California at San Francisco.

“Rhode Island’s APCD uses a new and innovative ‘lockbox’ model for its master patient index (MPI),” notes Janice Bourgault, Onpoint’s Director of Client Services. “We subcontract with another firm that receives live identifiers from participating insurers and assigns blinded unique IDs that the insurers then submit to Onpoint with de-identified member data, creating a firewall that protects individuals’ privacy while enabling a very robust MPI solution. It’s an exciting approach – and the first time an APCD has successfully employed this model to enhance privacy.”

Rhode Island’s de-identified APCD data will be used to ensure “transparency of information about access, quality, utilization, efficiency, and cost of Rhode Island’s healthcare delivery system,” notes the Rhode Island Department of Health in the article.