Medicare hears bleak diagnosis of Y2K readiness

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Even in cases where both Medicare and physicians have
Y2K-ready computer systems, the electronic partners are
experiencing failure rates of as much as 20 percent when
they hook their systems together in tests.

. . .

could create cash-flow nightmares for medical clinics and
hospitals that rely on reliable Medicare payments to keep
their operations going.

Oregonian

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), November 14, 1999

Answers

I guess we will find out in January whether or not we have the capability to go analog (pencil and paper) or not. Lets bring it on!

As the Spaniards might say, let's have "the moment of Truth!"



-- K. Stevens (k. Stevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 14, 1999.


I can tell you right now that there is no way Medicare (or the Insurance industry, for that matter) can go back to manual processing. Medicare pays out around 8 million checks per month. Even if they could get that many bodies processing, they don't have the check inventory.

But HCFA is only the small part of the problem. The path for a Medicare claim is Provider => Intermediary => HCFA. The providers are not ready. The Intermediaries (74 nationwide) may or may not be ready. It's all electronic.

HCFA has already said that they will not process a claim that is improperly submitted. This scenario is a disaster waiting to happen. Many hospitals work on shoe-string budgets with JIT financing. A delay of even 30 days in payments means doors will shut.

HCFA is planning a test next week to see how the process will hold up. I don't know how realistic the test will be. I will be interested to see if we even hear the results.

As far as insurance companies go, I worked in the Actuarial department of a large insurer for 7 1/2 years. My wife was a claims processor at the same company. If an insurance company loses it's electronic processing capability, they are dead in the water. Plain and simple.

-- Pete (pberry1_98@yahoo.com), November 14, 1999.


A quick clarification. In my post above, I stated that HCFA pays out around 8 million checks per month. These are electronic transfers (no paper checks involved). Manual processing (which is not even feasible) would require paper checks which they simply don't have.

-- Pete (pberry1_98@yahoo.com), November 14, 1999.

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