Reposted from UMBC News:https://umbc.edu/stories/cider-program-hilltop-medicaid-study/ 

UMBC’s CIDER program supports new Hilltop Institute-led Medicaid study, other cross-collaborative projects

UMBC researchers are collaborating on a study that takes a closer look at specific diagnosis coding patterns that focus on societal factors that potentially influence the health of Maryland’s Medicaid recipients. 

Morgan Henderson, director of analytics and research at UMBC’s The Hilltop Institute, and Jun Chu, assistant professor of public health, are among the five cross-collaborative teams selected to receive funding from UMBC’s Center and Institute Departmentally-Engaged Research (CIDER) program. Henderson and Chu’s CIDER-supported project will investigate potential “z code” patterns of the state’s Medicaid recipients. Z codes are a set of diagnosis codes that refer to factors influencing a patient’s health status beyond diseases or injuries, called social determinants of health. 

“These specific diagnosis codes indicate certain social determinants of health-related factors, not just traditionally medical things,” explains Henderson, principal investigator of the study. Z code data indicates if a patient has an issue that’s related to social risk factors, such as unstable housing, lack of food, hazardous living environments, and employment status.

“There hasn’t been much analysis of z code patterns and we aim to lay a good foundation for better understanding these diagnosis codes within Maryland’s Medicaid data,” says Henderson. 

A deeper look into z code diagnosing could be a useful identification “to bring extra resources to Medicaid recipients who are in need,” says Chu. 

Analyzing Medicaid data

The study coincides with recent news of potential billion-dollar federal budget cuts to Maryland’s Medicaid program, which currently supports about 1.7 million Maryland residents. The Hilltop Institute specializes in working with the state’s Medicaid data. According to the institute’s Maryland Medicaid DataPort, two in five of those in Medicaid are children and Medicaid pays for 60 percent of nursing home stays. 

Chu’s research has largely focused on social determinants of health with a particular focus on immigrant communities and Medicaid recipients who are children. Henderson helped to develop and currently manages Hilltop’s predictive modeling portfolio. These predictive models, which also utilize z code data, use a variety of risk factors derived from Medicare and Medicaid claims data to estimate the probability that a given patient incurs certain outcomes in the near future.

The pair’s project will include two studies: one study will focus specifically on the patients ascribed z codes to determine what patterns arise based on patient-specific factors such as demographics, health care utilization, or geography. 

The second study will focus on analyzing the characteristics of the healthcare providers that indicate the z codes on Medicaid claims. 

“Patient claims are the engine that so much of health analysis relies upon. It’s the decision of the provider on which coding diagnoses to include—it’s not a completely standardized process,” says Henderson. 

CIDER 2025 recipients

The CIDER program’s goal includes supporting and promoting collaborative research between scholars based in one of UMBC’s affiliate centers and institutes and the university’s faculty researchers. Selected proposals are awarded up to $50,000 in seed funding for 18 months. 

The 2025 CIDER program recipients include: 

• Anin Puthukkudy, Earth and Space Institute, and Vanderlei Martins, professor of physics
• Jessica Sutton, Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research (GESTAR) II, Tejas Gokhale, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, and Thomas Stanley, GESTAR II
• Kaur Kullman, the Center for Space Sciences and Technology, Alan Sherman, Roberto Yus, and Enis Golaszewski, professors of computer science and electrical engineering
• Morgan Henderson, The Hilltop Institute at UMBC, and Jun Chu, assistant professor of public health
• Venkatesh Srinivasan, Center for Advanced Sensor Technology, Tyler Josephson, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering

Don Engel, associate vice president for research development, shares that the CIDER program was created to foster collaborations that draw on the full range of UMBC’s strengths in research and creative achievement. 

“CIDER helps connect faculty in our research centers with colleagues in degree-granting departments to pursue work with real impact—work that informs policy, advances knowledge, and ultimately serves the public good,” says Engel.