The growing complexity of health care and the age-old strategies we’re still electing to use.
Last year, the state of New York awarded a five-year, $564.9m contract to the Xerox corporation for the modernization of its state Medicaid claims processing system. The project is now about two-thirds of the way through its intended implementation time allotment. Due to the recent termination of Xerox’s contract with California Medicaid, during which the ongoing challenges of revamping that state’s software-based MMIS prevented any progress toward project goals, it wouldn’t be unfair for healthcare organizations in New York to feel a little anxious over how this last push to completion will unfold.
To read more about what went wrong in California, click here.
New York Medicaid serves a patient population of about six million. With so much at stake over the outcome of the pending modernization effort, the potential impact on healthcare organizations is severe.
Traditional software has a spotty track record when addressing large-scale organizational needs in healthcare. State projects are particularly challenging, as a solution must span across several sets of unique requirements on a massive scale and be prepared to address future needs as new healthcare initiatives and regulatory measures are announced. Custom software solutions are slow to build and difficult to change, resulting in predictable shortcomings in an environment that demands compliance. History has shown that large-scale implementations can go completely awry. In some cases, such as with Medi-Cal, the results have been disastrous.
New York’s Medicaid population is large and diverse, and needs a system that can keep up with the changing state of federal- and state-level requirements. The best solution to the complex needs of a statewide system is that which is readily adaptable to meet the inevitable changes of the regulations by which it is governed. Vendors that are unable to provide this fundamental quality—even those that purportedly have “New York experience”—are likely to fall short and get locked into endless implementation with the states they serve. Given the similar complexity and volume between the states of New York and California, a Medi-Cal-type scenario can’t be completely ruled out.
The track record for traditional software in large-scale healthcare markets has been far from perfect. The industry’s inclination to address expanding regulatory complexity with age-old technology means that healthcare organizations are more or less rolling dice over whether or not their chosen solutions will adequately serve them. In order to be successful, organizations must be willing to rethink the paradigm instead of simply hoping against uncertain odds that a legacy software deployment will go off without a hitch.
Interested in learning more about how to break from the status-quo? Click the button below!
[DEMOCTA cta=”Learn More”]
