Hospital Buyer

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health developed the Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACG) Rx-PM which identifies patients who are at higher risk and will benefit from care management. Sixteen different organizations, including Medicaid agencies, pharmacy benefits administrators, and managed care groups, have implemented the solution, according to a press release from Johns Hopkins. The financials of the contract awards were not described.

ACG Rx-PM creates predictive models based on data gathered from claims information from retail pharmacies, the system was originally created in 2006. The software rapidly identifies those patients who are at risk and would benefit from a higher level of oversight.

The ACG Rx-PM utilizes Rx-MGs (Rx morbidity groups) which is a classification for national drug codes (NDCs). The Rx-MGs combine categories of the NDCs based on patient morbidity characteristics. This tool complements other systems previously created at Hopkins, all among the ACG-PM model that uses information from medical claims.

Adoption of the system, according to representatives from Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, will help expand the resources available for predictive systems. That organization intends to integrate this with diagnosis-based predictive models to better understand population health and improve patient quality. This creates a more robust model, which is then more comprehensive in its ability to extrapolate data.

DST Health Solutions partnered with Hopkins to distribute the product. The relationship commenced in 1992 with the initial ACG System creation by Hopkins.

November 13, 2007 Related topics: Contract Awards, Quality, Safety, Errors, Pharmaceuticals