Glitch Drops Medicaid Patients for a Day
A mysterious computer glitch dumped nearly a million Medicaid recipients over the weekend
Tuesday, Aug 4, 2009 | Updated 6:00 PM EDT
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A computer glitch wiped out a million state Medicaid recipients.
An unknown number of Florida's 2.6 million Medicaid patients were mistakenly deleted from eligibility rolls -- zapped by a computer glitch.
A spokeswoman for the state Agency for Health Care Administration said Tuesday that the problem has been fixed, although a reason for the weekend computer failure has yet to be determined.
ACHA spokeswoman Shelisha Durden said the system was fully operational Tuesday. Most of those dropped were believed to be mothers and children registered into the federal program by the Department of Children and Families.
"As soon as the department was notified, we sent communications out to all of our service centers and field staff to ensure service to our clients was not going to be a problem," DCF spokeswoman Pat Smith said.
Neither Smith or Durden knew the exact number of enrollees who were temporarily deleted by the weekend computer failure. In July, DCF had 2.1 million eligible for Medicaid benefits. Durden said the problem was discovered Monday morning during a regular monitoring by EDS, the company the state pays to manage its Medicaid system.
"We still do not know what caused the problem," Durden said. "The Agency is working with EDS to determine the cause and to ensure that this does not happen again."
Copyright Associated Press
