Alabama's Medicaid program rated high risk for Y2k computer problems

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Alabama's Medicaid program rated high risk for Y2K computer problems

The Associated Press 09/17/99 1:48 AM Eastern

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama's Medicaid Agency is one of four in the nation at high risk for serious computer problems at the end of the year from the so-called Y2K bug, a federal agency said.

The Health Care Financing Administration released a survey Thursday that said Alabama was at high risk for failure in its claims processing systems. More than 600,000 people are eligible for benefits through the state agency.

The survey did not specify the problems that made Alabama a high risk, but said state agencies in that category usually are characterized by poor project management, poor planning and inadequate testing.

Lee Maddox, Y2K coordinator for Alabama Medicaid, disputed the high-risk designation. He said a contractor, Electronic Data Systems, is installing a claims processing system capable of functioning after the Year 2000 changeover. EDS also runs the current system.

"We have not found where we would have any major problems," Maddox said. Problems with the new system should have no more than a slight impact on Medicaid recipients and providers such as doctors, hospitals and nursing homes, he said.

Maddox said Alabama Medicaid plans to mail letters to all recipients in December confirming that they are eligible for coverage in January even if Medicaid computers malfunction.

The Y2K label refers to older computers' inability to deal properly with dates ending in "00." Governments and businesses worldwide have spent billions of dollars to correct the problem.

Representatives for hospitals, physicians and nursing homes in Alabama said Thursday they knew of no Y2K-related payment problems so far in the Medicaid program.

http://flash.al.com/cgi-bin/al_nview.pl?/home1/wire/AP/Stream-Parsed/BAMA_NEWS/j8446_PM_AL--Medicaid-Y2K

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), September 17, 1999

Answers

From yahoo: Medicaid Jeopardized By Y2K - (MONTGOMERY) -- A cash shortage is the apparent reason Alabama's Medicaid computers are vulnerable to problems when the new year rolls in. For months in 1997 and 1998, Medicaid Commissioner Gwen Williams pleaded with the legislature for money to upgrade Medicaid's computer -- without success. Now the federal Health Care Financing Administration puts Alabama and three other states in danger of system failures from the so-called Y2K bug -- the inability of some older computers to recognize the year 2000 and reset to the year 1900.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), September 17, 1999.

Vermont is on that shit list too.....

-- farmer (hillsidefarm@drbs.net), September 19, 1999.

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