Concern for vast social services database on the city’s neediest, By Anemona Hartocollis, June 16, 2011, New York Times: “New York City has spent the past 18 months developing a database on four million residents, most of them the city’s neediest, which officials say will enhance social services but which advocates for the poor say could put their privacy at risk. Using data-sharing concepts developed by the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies, the database links together vast amounts of information gathered by city agencies that previously maintained their files separately. Now, workers in an array of city departments will have access to information about nearly half of the city’s residents, including welfare and food stamp payments, child care vouchers, and records of Medicaid enrollment and stays in public housing and shelters, among other kinds of social service records…”
Tag: Computer systems
Colorado Benefits Management System
Federal audit targets delays, errors in Colorado’s benefits computer system, By Michael Booth, February 13, 2011, Denver Post: “Persistent delays and errors in the state computer system for Medicaid and food stamps have prompted federal officials to launch an ongoing performance review of Colorado’s multibillion-dollar benefit programs. The long-troubled Colorado Benefits Management System continued to malfunction after the federal review got underway last summer, with lockouts and slowdowns plaguing managers through at least December, documents obtained by The Denver Post show. Repeated internal complaints about system crashes also have raised questions about a $44 million contract with Deloitte consultants to overhaul a network that has proved problematic since its installation in 2004 at a cost of $223 million. Disclosure of the new federal audit, after an open-records request, comes as legal-aid attorneys continue their pursuit of court sanctions against the state Health Care Policy and Financing Department for delays in processing benefit records. Those delays have exceeded 70 percent of cases in some months…”
Medicaid Computer System – Washington
New Medicaid computer system plagued with glitches, By Sean Collins Walsh, December 4, 2010, Seattle Times: “Washington’s new computer system for processing Medicaid payments is failing to pay so many valid claims that several doctors and clinics have stopped taking new Medicaid patients until they get paid for the ones they’ve already treated. Others say they may need to do the same, or even stop treating Medicaid patients altogether. The Web-based program, ProviderOne, was $54 million more expensive and three years later than planned when it launched in May, replacing a mainframe system for processing claims submitted by health-care providers on behalf of the state’s poorest patients…”