Orange County Medi-Cal Billing System Expected To Be Functional in April
A computer billing system for Orange County to submit Medi-Cal claims to the state is expected to be operating in April, nearly three years after it was supposed to be operational, the Los Angeles Times reports (Pasco, Los Angeles Times, 12/15). The system, which originally was scheduled to be operational by July 2002, is intended to centralize mental health patients' medical records and submit claims to the state for services eligible for Medi-Cal reimbursement, but the system immediately malfunctioned when launched in September 2003 (California Healthline, 3/31).
The county's first successful "mock" bill was sent through the system on Friday and was accepted by the state, the Times reports.
County CIO Dan Hatton said testing will run from January through March to determine whether the system, developed by Missouri-based software firm Cerner can process as many as 50,000 claims per month, the Times reports.
David Riley, chief compliance officer for the county Health Care Agency, on Tuesday said that he did not know how much the delay had cost the county in software, equipment and billing delays, but he said the county paid $500,000 to hire additional workers to compensate for the loss of the computer system (Pasco, Los Angeles Times, 12/15).