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AHS outlines MDWAS unified health data plan; VITL role, privacy and timing questioned
Summary
Agency of Human Services and Green Mountain Care Board data staff described the MDWAS unified health data space and timelines for a Medicaid-centered data warehouse. Witnesses discussed Vital (Vermont Health Information Exchange) as a key partner, privacy and data-lag concerns, and the challenge of scaling from Medicaid to the broader population.
Agency of Human Services officials described a multi-component project the agency calls the Medicaid Data Warehouse and Analytics Solution (MDWAS) and framed it as a proof-of-concept for a broader unified health data space during testimony before the Senate Health & Welfare Committee on Feb. 20.
Will Dempsey, health care officer for AHS, said MDWAS is building a data lake and data warehouse that will link Medicaid claims and clinical data and enable reporting and role-based access for users. He told the committee the project uses federal funds for most development and is “on schedule and on scope and on budget.”
Dempsey summarized the planned rollout: the data lake went live in November; the data warehouse was in development and slated to go live in July; and the analytics and reporting environment was expected to go live in November of the calendar year. He emphasized that the initial implementation covers only the Medicaid population and that scaling would require adding commercial claims, social drivers of health screening data and other sources.
AHS recommended removing statute language that would single out any single operator; Dempsey said VITL (the Vermont Health Information Exchange, often called VITL or VITAL in testimony) is a key partner that collects, matches and stores clinical data but that the state agency should have flexibility in how clinical and claims linking is described in law.
Green Mountain Care Board data director Steven Andrews and deputy director Lindsey Kill told the committee they support integrated data but raised technical and legal constraints. Andrews noted patient privacy concerns and warned that Medicare data use agreements limit sharing of identifiers needed to link records. Kill emphasized timeliness: Vermont’s all-payer claims database and Medicare feeds carry a lag (committee testimony said full 2023 claims were not yet available), which limits real-time policy decision-making.
Committee members asked whether insurers would bear costs to share data and whether private payers might resist. AHS staff said the proposed architecture would rely on state-held data flows and the care board and AHS favored a state-led approach rather than leaving the integration to a private vendor.
Ending: Committee members asked for the presenters’ slides and written comments. Several senators requested clearer statutory language about who would lead clinical-claims linkage, how privacy would be protected, and a plan and timeline for scaling MDWAS beyond Medicaid.
