The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement was pleased to receive a visit last Thursday from a member of the team that manages the Hawai’i All-Payer Claims Database.
The Hawai’i APCD contains health insurance claims and enrollment data from public and private payers. It is maintained by the Telecommunications and Social Informatics Research Program (TASI), a component of the Social Science Research Institute of the College of Social Science at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa, and the Pacific Health Informatics and Data Center (PHIDC).
Christina Higa, associate director of TASI/PHIDC, visited ACHI’s offices and participated in a discussion with ACHI’s Data Team and other staff. TASI/PHIDC Director Norman Okamura and Sean Okamoto, APCD project manager for TASI/PHIDC, joined the discussion by video conference.
Legislation to create the Hawai’i APCD was approved in 2016. Its team was interested to hear from ACHI personnel about practices they have adopted and hurdles they have overcome, according to Kenley Money, ACHI’s director of information systems architecture.
“We were able to provide a very usable description of the Arkansas APCD’s genesis, evolution and implementation,” Money said. “Hawaii can use many of the approaches that we developed.”
Money said ACHI’s Data Team, which she leads, obtained useful information from the Hawaiian team on acquiring data from provider-led entities and managed care organizations. The Hawaiian team also offered insights on obtaining health data for the Marshallese population. Arkansas has the second-largest Marshallese population in the United States, after Hawaii.
The Arkansas APCD was created under the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative Act of 2015 and is maintained by ACHI in collaboration with the Arkansas Insurance Department.
