ASPIRE Recruitment and Funding
2020 ASPIRE recruitment applications will be available from April 26 through June 12, 2019.
Recruitment Steps:
- Hospitals must review the ASPIRE Eligibility Requirements and Site Expectations
- Submit an application
- Hospital IT will receive MPOG’s extract checking tool (File Checker) in June
- Hospital clinical team must partake in a meeting with the Coordinating Center in June and July
- Hospital IT will send File Checker results to Coordinating Center by August 30, 2019
- ASPIRE will announce Cohort 5 Sites by September 13, 2019
- Hospital starts preparing for ASPIRE technical implementation September – December
- Cohort 5 sites will start technical implementation on January 6, 2020
File Checker Software
MPOG developed an extract checking tool (File Checker) to help us asses a hospital’s technical readiness. Beginning in June, prospective sites will be given access to the tool. This application scans the data files intended for MPOG and validates if they adhere to the provided specification. File Checker is a standalone application that can run on any Windows workstation and does not need the MPOG framework to be installed. This allows sites to get quick and accurate feedback on their extract development without the expense of server hardware or SQL Server licensing.
Clinical Intake Meeting
All hospitals that submit an application will participate in a clinical intake meeting to review ASPIRE participation requirements. The meeting will be scheduled between the ASPIRE Coordinating Center and the clinical team from the hospital. The meeting must include, the Chair / Head of Practice, Quality Champion, PI, IT Champion, and the hospital Pay-for-Performance (P4P) Administrator.
Funding Michigan Hospitals
State of Michigan hospitals are eligible to receive funding from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) to offset the costs of joining MPOG.
In the first year, Michigan hospitals will receive funding from BCBSM for servers, software, cost of obtaining professional fee billing reimbursement and IT / clinical staff costs. Implementation takes a significant amount of technical resources and a hospital should plan to allocate 50% of a technical expert for six months. In addition, hospitals will receive reimbursement for an Anesthesiology Clinical Quality Reviewer (ACQR) who will coordinate the data extraction and assist the QI Champion in leading the QI efforts.
After the first year, hospitals will continue to receive yearly funding from BCBSM for the ACQR and technical resources. MPOG is an ongoing effort and will require continued technical support to assist with ad hoc issues, patches and software updates.
All new hospitals will officially start in January of the following year and should expect to receive their first payment from BCBSM in mid-January. Although the official start is in January, new sites will start preparations for implementation in September.
A hospital system that several hospitals on the same instance of an electronic health record (EHR) system are categorized as Primary or Secondary sites. The technical implementation costs will not double to add more hospitals but a hospital system will incur incremental costs for each additional hospital. All sites may be eligible to receive funding for an ACQR at each hospitals.
Year One Estimated Reimbursements
| Computer Equipment and Software | Primary Site | Secondary Site |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Server 2012 local database and virtual machine | $8,000 | $2,000 |
| SQL Server 2012 Site license (if no site license available through your hospital) | $5,000 or $0 | $0 |
| Professional fee billing company reimbursement (funds to obtain professional fee data from billing company) | $3,000 | $1,000 |
| Site Hospital IT to deploy EHR interface | $40,000 | $10,000 |
| Total first year capital reimbursement | $56,000 or $51,000 | $13,000 |
| Personnel | Primary Site | Secondary Site |
|---|---|---|
| ACQR Tier 1: 0.4 FTE funded at 100%, based on 0 - 70,000 cases per year | $35,000 - $43,000 | $35,000 - $43,000 |
| ACQR Tier 2: 0.8 FTE funded at 100%, based on 70,000+ cases per year | $70,000 - $86,000 | $70,000 - $86,000 |
Estimated Ongoing Reimbursements – Year 2 and Beyond
| Primary Site | Secondary Site | |
|---|---|---|
| Operating | ||
| Hospital IT maintenance of data interface | $8,000 | $2,000 |
| Personnel | ||
| ACQR Tier 1: 0.4 FTE funded at 100%, based on 0 - 70,000 cases per year | $35,000 - $43,000 | $35,000 - $43,000 |
| ACQR Tier 2: 0.8 FTE funded at 100%, based on 70,000+ cases per year | $70,000 - $86,000 | $70,000 - $86,000 |