The Social Security Administration’s Expansion of Health Information Technology
Office Affiliation: The Office of Audit
Audit Report Number: A-01-13-13027
SSA’s Medical Evidence Gathering and Analysis Through Health IT (MEGAHIT) system automatically obtains electronic records from SSA’s partners in minutes.
In our review of Health Information Technology Provided by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and MedVirginia (A-01-11-11117), we determined that SSA’s health information technology (health IT) pilots reduced the time it took to receive health records and make disability determinations. During that review, SSA had two health IT partners.
To conduct our current review, we identified 215,176 individuals whose electronic disability folders indicated SSA requested health IT records from July 2011 through May 2014. From this population, we randomly selected 275 cases for detailed analysis. We also requested feedback from five disability determination services (DDS) and met with SSA staff.
The objective of this report is to assess SSA’s expansion of health IT.