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Raimondo places blame for UHIP fiasco; Roberts resigns, contractor targeted

By February 15, 2017December 21st, 2017Uncategorized

Rhode Island’s failed Medicaid (UHIP) computer system at center of issue

PROVIDENCE – The resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Elizabeth Roberts Tuesday was just the beginning of Governor Gina Raimondo’s newest attempt to fix the state’s problem-ridden public benefits computer system.

The governor announced Wednesday morning that she will continue to withhold payment from the primary vendor and builder of the Unified Healthcare Infrastructure Project: Deloitte Consulting.

 She also plans to redo Deloitte’s contract so future payments are tied to completing specific tasks, and demand it pay for any extra money the state has to dish out to fix UHIP. It launched last September, and caused immediate headaches – such as three- to four hour waits at field offices, delayed food assistance, providers not being paid and many residents incorrectly denied benefits.

Of the $364 million project, which is paid to multiple vendors, Deloitte has already received about $200 million. In a recent media briefing, Eric Beane, acting director of the state Department of Human Services, said about $68 million is left to give Deloitte.

Beane replaced former Director Melba Depena Affigne, who with Chief Digital Officer Thom Guertin, gave their forced resignations last month. Raimondo gave Beane 30 days to review UHIP and come back with recommendations.

Roberts departure, changing Deloitte’s contract, more training for staff, hiring additional technicians and asking some staff who were laid off prematurely last fall – which Beane described as valuable because of their institutional knowledge – are a result of his findings, which was also released Wednesday.

His assessment concludes it was a mistake to go live in September, a collective decision made by Raimondo and state leaders after receiving what he described as “incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information” and “too rosy” of a picture.

A draft of his Powerpoint presentation for the House Oversight committee hearing scheduled for late Wednesday afternoon included a graphic Deloitte gave a couple of weeks before UHIP was turned on with all green lights.

 “The reality [is] Deloitte delivered Rhode Island a broken system,” read one of Beane’s slides. UHIP was supposed to replace multiple systems and programs, some of which were more than 30 years old, and become of one-stop shopping, streamline approach to delivering public benefits.
It said key functions were designed poorly, important user friendly interfaces have been “deferred to future releases” and staff was forced to use too many manual work-arounds because the system was incomplete.

A Johnston consultant, Kenneth Brindamour, was hired last month at $160 an hour to be UHIP’s new project manager and help with the technology fixes that need to be made. Beane said Brindamour has already begun.

“Bottom line,” another slide of Beane’s said, “We can never get back more time, bue we can put the pieces in place to turn this around.”

A new timeline for corrections includes stopping the growth of the backlog of applications in the next 90 days as well as “ensure sufficient staffing.” There are 24,083 applications that have yet to have eligibility determinations. It was 11,152 in November.

Within the first year, the state expects to reduce backlogs to “steady-state levels,” reduce late or inaccurate payments to providers and resolve any remaining problems from the conversion of the old systems and programs to UHIP.

With a budget of $3.9 billion — some 40 percent of the state’s budget — the health and human services office oversees the Department of Children, Youth and Families; the Department of Health; the Department of Human Services (including the divisions of Elderly Affairs and Veterans Affairs); and the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.

Roberts could not be reached for comment Tuesday. The Virginia native, who arrived in Rhode Island to attend Brown University, spent a decade — 1997 to 2007 — as a state senator. She was then elected to two terms as lieutenant governor before she became Raimondo’s nominee in 2014 for the cabinet position overseeing one of the largest departments in state government.

At the time, the governor said Roberts “happens to be one of the smartest people I know as it relates to health care.”

Roberts also has a long history of family in government. Her late father-in-law, Thomas H. Roberts, was chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court in the 1960s and 1970s. Her husband’s uncle, Dennis J. Roberts, was governor from 1951 to 1959, and her brother-in-law Dennis J. Roberts II was attorney general in the 1970s and 1980s.

Beane is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday evening to shed more light on UHIP’s failings.

House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Patricia Serpa, D-West Warwick, said among the questions she hopes will be answered: Who was the project manager primarily responsible for the system’s launch?

“Nothing would surprise me,” Serpa said. “It seems we’ve had a huge management problem since before this thing launched in September.”

With reports from staff writers Patrick Anderson and Jennifer Bogdan of the Providence Journal

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

 

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About Matt Leonard

Matthew J. Leonard, Esq. has devoted his practice to handling the legal needs of individuals and their business interests through all stages of life. As an attorney with the law firm of Salter McGowan Sylvia & Leonard, Inc., he has been engaged to handle matters from basic to sophisticated involving Estate Planning, Elder Law, Medicaid Planning, Probate, Trust and Estate Administration, Real Estate, Business Transactions, Business Creation and related litigation.

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