Medicaid Information System – New York

Taking pulse of Medicaid costs, By Cathleen F. Crowley, October 25, 2011, Albany Times-Union: “Guy Amisano’s soda company sold cases of Pepsi all over Western New York, but he never could put his finger on which sales were the most profitable or whether his price discounts paid off. So in the 1980s, Amisano hired some computer geeks to build a software program to track sales and costs in real time. ‘I was able to see precisely what and to whom I should sell and at what price to achieve optimal profitability without losing volume,’ Amisano said. His profits rose 20 percent and his company grew significantly. Over the next 14 years, Amisano ran Pepsi-Cola Elmira Bottling Co. while selling his computer program on the side. More than half of the beverage industry bought it. In 2000, his family sold the Horseheads-based bottling company to focus on the visual datamining software under a business called Salient Management Company. Now New York’s Medicaid system — the largest in the nation — uses Salient’s software to track the public health program’s $52 billion annual budget, 4.7 million recipients and 60,000 health care providers. Medicaid is the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people. For the first time, top health officials say they can see where Medicaid dollars are going in real time…”