THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN, Texas -- Scores of confidential documents containing medical and financial information about people applying for state benefits wound up in a Seattle warehouse after clients used an incorrect fax number to send the paperwork, a newspaper reported Friday.
While it isn't clear why people used the wrong number, it took the Texas Health and Human Services Commission more than three weeks to seriously check into the complaints from the Take Care Store warehouse that they were receiving the confidential faxes, the Houston Chronicle reported.
"It was an error on our part that we did not complete our investigation of this information more quickly," agency spokeswoman Gail Randall said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Applications for Medicaid, food stamps, low-cost children's health insurance and welfare started showing up in Seattle three months ago, warehouse clerk Shaun Peck told the newspaper. They included everything from Social Security numbers and medical evaluations to income tax forms and pay stubs.
Other than the area code, the toll-free telephone number for the warehouse is almost identical to the toll-free fax number for the state contractor that processes such applications. The Texas Access Alliance's area code is 877, while the warehouse's is 800.
The warehouse telephone had a feature that automatically forwarded faxes from their phone line to their fax machine. After talking with the TAA, the warehouse disconnected that feature, contractor spokeswoman Jill Angelo said.
Peck didn't know how many applications they'd received, roughly guessing a dozen a week.
Workers shredded some, he said, and manually stopped the fax machine from printing others.
They even tried contacting the return fax numbers listed on the cover sheets, only to wind up talking to clerks at office and printing stores that couldn't figure out which customers had sent them.
The warehouse manager finally asked the woman who manages their Yellow Pages account to help figure out what was going on. She told Texas officials about the problem on May 9. And on May 25, she directly contacted the contractor in charge of processing the applications.
Yet it took the state and its contractor until Wednesday to begin seriously investigating and fixing the problem, the newspaper reported.
Randall said the state and TAA found one internal document that had the incorrect fax number, but the mistake was not included in any client correspondence. She said the clients may have misdialed since the numbers are so similar.
In a statement, Angelo said TAA has collected all the documents that warehouse workers didn't shred. She estimated the number of faxes sent to the wrong number amounted to less than 1 percent of the total number of faxes the agency has received since the beginning of 2006.
The mix-up is the latest problem to emerge from the privatization of the state's benefits eligibility system. The state plans to replace 99 of its 310 eligibility offices with four call centers run by the TAA.
In the months since the transition began, lawmakers have criticized the contractor's performance and clients have complained that their applications have been lost at the call centers.
Anne Dunkelberg, a senior policy analyst with the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, told the AP the mix-up is one example of literally dozens of different kinds of technical problems clients are having with the contractor and the new eligibility system.
"It's a real shame ... that yet another technical problem is getting in the way of people getting the benefits that they qualify for," she said.
The TAA also recently took over processing applications and renewals for the state's low cost-insurance program for the working poor. Enrollment in the Children's Health Insurance
Program has fallen every month since December, with nearly 30,000 children leaving the rolls since then.
The commission announced Friday that total enrollment for June was 293,564, down from 298,776 in May.
Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins said 8,600 children who were enrolled in CHIP were eligible for Medicaid and were being moved to those rolls without any disruption in their coverage. He said 5,000 children were leaving CHIP because their family's income was too high.
Notice where that came from. Texas HHSC is famous! (how embarrassing...)
Friday, June 02, 2006
Needy Texans' applications faxed into a 'black hole'
Date: June 02, 2006
Misprinted form leads many to send info meant for the state to a puzzled company in Seattle
By Polly Ross Hughes
Houston Chronicle AUSTIN -
Three months ago, dozens of documents from Texas containing highly confidential financial and health information began arriving over a fax machine at a Seattle warehouse.
Shaun Peck, a clerk at the warehouse, searched through the mysterious documents - revealing Social Security numbers, medical evaluations, income tax forms and pay stubs - and wondered why they kept coming and where they should be going instead.
Back in Texas, frustrated elderly, disabled and poor people have long wondered why they sent applications for benefits to the state only to be told they never arrived.
Peck didn't know it, but he had discovered the much-rumored "black hole"eating up Texas applications for Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The snafu is just the latest example of confusion during the state's transition this year from public to private screening of health and welfare applicants under an $899 million contract with outsourcing giant Accenture LLP.
At least 144 of the faxes, and possibly many more destroyed in a shredder or manually disconnected, were intended for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission or its private contractor in Midland but landed instead at the Seattle warehouse.
But, despite a call and two e-mails from Seattle to the state agency more than three weeks ago, misdirected faxes still arrived at the Seattle warehouse this week from applicants apparently clueless that a problem existed.
"I have not heard anything back from them. Nothing at all," said Cindy Sandford of Seattle, who alerted Texas officials May 9 about the wayward faxes at the request of the warehouse manager.
It wasn't until Wednesday - the day the Houston Chronicle raised questions - that the agency and its private contractor actively began checking into and fixing the mistake.
"It is unfortunate. It is an error on our part that it did not go further in that regard," HHSC spokeswoman Gail Randall said Thursday, referring to the agency's lack of greater follow-through early on. "I know they've been working on this since yesterday."
However, the mystery of the bad fax number is finally unraveling. It turns out a Midland call center run by Accenture mistakenly listed the wrong fax number on a document sent to a state agency handling benefits for the elderly and disabled.
Wrong number
Under its Texas Access Alliance letterhead, Accenture and its subcontractors listed the call center's Midland address, the state's 2-1-1 hot line for needy Texans and two fax numbers.
If information was faxed to the first one, 877-HHSC-TEX, no problem. But if it was sent to the second fax number, 800-447-2839, private documents landed in Peck's hands at the Take Care Store warehouse in Seattle.
"There was a black hole in Seattle, Washington," Peck told the Chronicle.
"People send us check stubs. They send us bills. We've gotten letters from people asking why they haven't been approved for food stamps yet. They were faxing in their personal information."
Exposure of clients' identities and personal information raises questions about state and federal privacy laws, said Celia Hagert, policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank advocating for low-income Texans.
Federal law and regulations generally require any state public assistance agency to safeguard personal information against unauthorized use or disclosure. This includes such things as names, addresses, amount of assistance, wages, medical data and Social Security numbers.
The wrong-number snafu comes amid widespread complaints about contract performance at Accenture's private call center in Midland, plunging enrollments for children's health insurance programs and complaints of lost applications for food stamps and other programs handled at the center.
"I think this is a screw-up. Everything that can go wrong with this transition (from state to private benefit screeners) has gone wrong," said Anne Dunkelberg, a health policy analyst at the Austin think tank. "This is something we didn't even dream of. Who knows what happened to these people's benefits?"
Peck said he was shocked when the faxes with Texas area codes began arriving and was perplexed about what to do. Attempts to call the return fax numbers often turned up large office and print centers that couldn't identify which customer had sent the fax, he said.
He isn't sure how many benefit applications and supporting documents have arrived at the store warehouse, roughly guessing a dozen a week or perhaps 144 in three months.
But, they are still arriving, including a 10-page fax seeking children's health insurance and food stamps late last week with copies of a Social Security card and bank statement, said Sandford, who manages the Take Care Store's Yellow Pages account and agreed to help the warehouse get to the bottom of the misdirected faxes.
Wrong number removed
Commission spokeswoman Randall said Thursday that the incorrect fax number has now been removed from the private contractor's memos to the Department of Aging and Disability Services and there is no sign it was ever printed on letters to clients. It is possible, however, that people have inadvertently misdialed since 877 and 800 are both toll-free prefixes, she added.
Sandford, frustrated when Texas faxes kept coming to Seattle, contacted Accenture's Texas Access Alliance directly on May 25 and sent the private contractors a copy of their cover sheet containing the erroneous fax number.
"Please do not ignore this fax," she began. "Please change your cover sheet immediately and notify everyone who has a copy of this incorrect information."
Accenture issued a statement to the Chronicle on Thursday. It said as soon as it became aware that faxes were going to a wrong number, it began a thorough investigation leading to actions that should stop faxes from landing in Seattle.
"We found out about it yesterday," said the company's spokeswoman, Jill Angelo of Public Strategies Inc. in Austin. The company also noted that 215,000 other faxes were sent to the correct number this year.
----------------NOW READ THIS------------------------------
PROOF THAT HHSC WAS AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM BACK IN JANUARY, NOT "YESTERDAY"
-----Original Message-----
From: O'Brien,Taylor
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 8:35 AM
To: O'Brien,Taylor; Adame,Mary Margaret; Alvarez,Joe T; Arbuckle,Bob;
Barker,Shaun; Brown,Patricia Ann; Cox,Kathy; Doan,Mary; Forcade,Mari; Heflin,Robert; Knoll,Debbie; Maxie,Carolyn F; Moser,Grace L; Semien,Stephanie Ann; Wallace,Jerry; Cleveland,James N; Wade,Jenice L; Gamboa,Ramon
Cc: Wade,Charolette Ann; Barker,Shaun; Jumper,Kirsten; Forcade,Mari;
Wallace,Jerry; Andrews,Kemia Rae; Armstrong,Gayle; Balthazar,Ellen L; Benson,Janet Lea; Creamer,Teri L; Escarciga,Angie; Haney,Shenaz; Leschber,Susan; Osuna,Mary E; Rios,Brenda; Schneider,Debra; Speed,Jan; Narro,Benito M; Smith,Tammerriol J; Torres,Mando; Rubio,Lily; Vera,Cynthia I; Rodriguez,Martha; Jumper,Kirsten; Dingman,Kari; Barker,Shaun; Knoll,Debbie
Subject: Urgent - Additional Information / Important Reminder --
Address and Fax Number for Kids Meds Apps
Good morning all -
Please share this information immediately with all local office staff.
Fax one Kids Med Application at a time.
Important Information to Remember:
We must remember that these faxes are received on a "fax server" and are not printed out at the "receiving fax". Instead, each fax job received contains
all information from that specific transmission. Therefore, each fax
transmission must consist of one application only.
Thanks for your assistance
Taylor O'Brien
State Operations - Office of Eligibility Services Health and Human Services Commission
office: 512.206.5658 cell: 512.297.6211
pager: taylor1.obrien@my2way.com <mailto:taylor1.obrien@my2way.com>
-----Original Message-----
From: O'Brien,Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 10:39 AM
To: O'Brien,Taylor; Adame,Mary Margaret; Alvarez,Joe T;
Arbuckle,Bob; Barker,Shaun; Brown,Patricia Ann; Cox,Kathy; Doan,Mary;
Forcade,Mari; Heflin,Robert; Knoll,Debbie; Maxie,Carolyn F; Moser,Grace L;
Semien,Stephanie Ann; Wallace,Jerry
Cc: Wade,Charolette Ann; Barker,Shaun; Jumper,Kirsten;
Forcade,Mari; Wallace,Jerry; Andrews,Kemia Rae; Armstrong,Gayle;
Balthazar,Ellen L; Benson,Janet Lea; Creamer,Teri L; Escarciga,Angie;
Haney,Shenaz; Leschber,Susan; Osuna,Mary E; Rios,Brenda; White,Donald;
Schneider,Debra; Speed,Jan
Subject: Updated Information -- Address and Fax Number for
Kids Meds Apps
Importance: High
Good morning all - we have received clarification on the fax number
for Kids Meds Apps
FAX number: 1-877-542-5951
Good afternoon all -
Below is the address to send Kids Meds apps to if you choose
to mail instead of fax.
Misprinted form leads many to send info meant for the state to a puzzled company in Seattle
By Polly Ross Hughes
Houston Chronicle AUSTIN -
Three months ago, dozens of documents from Texas containing highly confidential financial and health information began arriving over a fax machine at a Seattle warehouse.
Shaun Peck, a clerk at the warehouse, searched through the mysterious documents - revealing Social Security numbers, medical evaluations, income tax forms and pay stubs - and wondered why they kept coming and where they should be going instead.
Back in Texas, frustrated elderly, disabled and poor people have long wondered why they sent applications for benefits to the state only to be told they never arrived.
Peck didn't know it, but he had discovered the much-rumored "black hole"eating up Texas applications for Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The snafu is just the latest example of confusion during the state's transition this year from public to private screening of health and welfare applicants under an $899 million contract with outsourcing giant Accenture LLP.
At least 144 of the faxes, and possibly many more destroyed in a shredder or manually disconnected, were intended for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission or its private contractor in Midland but landed instead at the Seattle warehouse.
But, despite a call and two e-mails from Seattle to the state agency more than three weeks ago, misdirected faxes still arrived at the Seattle warehouse this week from applicants apparently clueless that a problem existed.
"I have not heard anything back from them. Nothing at all," said Cindy Sandford of Seattle, who alerted Texas officials May 9 about the wayward faxes at the request of the warehouse manager.
It wasn't until Wednesday - the day the Houston Chronicle raised questions - that the agency and its private contractor actively began checking into and fixing the mistake.
"It is unfortunate. It is an error on our part that it did not go further in that regard," HHSC spokeswoman Gail Randall said Thursday, referring to the agency's lack of greater follow-through early on. "I know they've been working on this since yesterday."
However, the mystery of the bad fax number is finally unraveling. It turns out a Midland call center run by Accenture mistakenly listed the wrong fax number on a document sent to a state agency handling benefits for the elderly and disabled.
Wrong number
Under its Texas Access Alliance letterhead, Accenture and its subcontractors listed the call center's Midland address, the state's 2-1-1 hot line for needy Texans and two fax numbers.
If information was faxed to the first one, 877-HHSC-TEX, no problem. But if it was sent to the second fax number, 800-447-2839, private documents landed in Peck's hands at the Take Care Store warehouse in Seattle.
"There was a black hole in Seattle, Washington," Peck told the Chronicle.
"People send us check stubs. They send us bills. We've gotten letters from people asking why they haven't been approved for food stamps yet. They were faxing in their personal information."
Exposure of clients' identities and personal information raises questions about state and federal privacy laws, said Celia Hagert, policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank advocating for low-income Texans.
Federal law and regulations generally require any state public assistance agency to safeguard personal information against unauthorized use or disclosure. This includes such things as names, addresses, amount of assistance, wages, medical data and Social Security numbers.
The wrong-number snafu comes amid widespread complaints about contract performance at Accenture's private call center in Midland, plunging enrollments for children's health insurance programs and complaints of lost applications for food stamps and other programs handled at the center.
"I think this is a screw-up. Everything that can go wrong with this transition (from state to private benefit screeners) has gone wrong," said Anne Dunkelberg, a health policy analyst at the Austin think tank. "This is something we didn't even dream of. Who knows what happened to these people's benefits?"
Peck said he was shocked when the faxes with Texas area codes began arriving and was perplexed about what to do. Attempts to call the return fax numbers often turned up large office and print centers that couldn't identify which customer had sent the fax, he said.
He isn't sure how many benefit applications and supporting documents have arrived at the store warehouse, roughly guessing a dozen a week or perhaps 144 in three months.
But, they are still arriving, including a 10-page fax seeking children's health insurance and food stamps late last week with copies of a Social Security card and bank statement, said Sandford, who manages the Take Care Store's Yellow Pages account and agreed to help the warehouse get to the bottom of the misdirected faxes.
Wrong number removed
Commission spokeswoman Randall said Thursday that the incorrect fax number has now been removed from the private contractor's memos to the Department of Aging and Disability Services and there is no sign it was ever printed on letters to clients. It is possible, however, that people have inadvertently misdialed since 877 and 800 are both toll-free prefixes, she added.
Sandford, frustrated when Texas faxes kept coming to Seattle, contacted Accenture's Texas Access Alliance directly on May 25 and sent the private contractors a copy of their cover sheet containing the erroneous fax number.
"Please do not ignore this fax," she began. "Please change your cover sheet immediately and notify everyone who has a copy of this incorrect information."
Accenture issued a statement to the Chronicle on Thursday. It said as soon as it became aware that faxes were going to a wrong number, it began a thorough investigation leading to actions that should stop faxes from landing in Seattle.
"We found out about it yesterday," said the company's spokeswoman, Jill Angelo of Public Strategies Inc. in Austin. The company also noted that 215,000 other faxes were sent to the correct number this year.
----------------NOW READ THIS------------------------------
PROOF THAT HHSC WAS AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM BACK IN JANUARY, NOT "YESTERDAY"
-----Original Message-----
From: O'Brien,Taylor
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 8:35 AM
To: O'Brien,Taylor; Adame,Mary Margaret; Alvarez,Joe T; Arbuckle,Bob;
Barker,Shaun; Brown,Patricia Ann; Cox,Kathy; Doan,Mary; Forcade,Mari; Heflin,Robert; Knoll,Debbie; Maxie,Carolyn F; Moser,Grace L; Semien,Stephanie Ann; Wallace,Jerry; Cleveland,James N; Wade,Jenice L; Gamboa,Ramon
Cc: Wade,Charolette Ann; Barker,Shaun; Jumper,Kirsten; Forcade,Mari;
Wallace,Jerry; Andrews,Kemia Rae; Armstrong,Gayle; Balthazar,Ellen L; Benson,Janet Lea; Creamer,Teri L; Escarciga,Angie; Haney,Shenaz; Leschber,Susan; Osuna,Mary E; Rios,Brenda; Schneider,Debra; Speed,Jan; Narro,Benito M; Smith,Tammerriol J; Torres,Mando; Rubio,Lily; Vera,Cynthia I; Rodriguez,Martha; Jumper,Kirsten; Dingman,Kari; Barker,Shaun; Knoll,Debbie
Subject: Urgent - Additional Information / Important Reminder --
Address and Fax Number for Kids Meds Apps
Good morning all -
Please share this information immediately with all local office staff.
Fax one Kids Med Application at a time.
Important Information to Remember:
We must remember that these faxes are received on a "fax server" and are not printed out at the "receiving fax". Instead, each fax job received contains
all information from that specific transmission. Therefore, each fax
transmission must consist of one application only.
Thanks for your assistance
Taylor O'Brien
State Operations - Office of Eligibility Services Health and Human Services Commission
office: 512.206.5658 cell: 512.297.6211
pager: taylor1.obrien@my2way.com <mailto:taylor1.obrien@my2way.com>
-----Original Message-----
From: O'Brien,Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 10:39 AM
To: O'Brien,Taylor; Adame,Mary Margaret; Alvarez,Joe T;
Arbuckle,Bob; Barker,Shaun; Brown,Patricia Ann; Cox,Kathy; Doan,Mary;
Forcade,Mari; Heflin,Robert; Knoll,Debbie; Maxie,Carolyn F; Moser,Grace L;
Semien,Stephanie Ann; Wallace,Jerry
Cc: Wade,Charolette Ann; Barker,Shaun; Jumper,Kirsten;
Forcade,Mari; Wallace,Jerry; Andrews,Kemia Rae; Armstrong,Gayle;
Balthazar,Ellen L; Benson,Janet Lea; Creamer,Teri L; Escarciga,Angie;
Haney,Shenaz; Leschber,Susan; Osuna,Mary E; Rios,Brenda; White,Donald;
Schneider,Debra; Speed,Jan
Subject: Updated Information -- Address and Fax Number for
Kids Meds Apps
Importance: High
Good morning all - we have received clarification on the fax number
for Kids Meds Apps
FAX number: 1-877-542-5951
Good afternoon all -
Below is the address to send Kids Meds apps to if you choose
to mail instead of fax.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
State privatization effort questioned
By Tim Evans
tim.evans@indystar.com
A massive effort to privatize claims processing for a million needy Hoosiers is drawing fire from critics who say the process is moving too fast and the two contenders have spotty track records.
About the companies
Two consortiums are seeking the $1 billion contract to manage applications and eligibility review for state and federal assistance programs operated by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.
• Accenture LLP, a Chicago-based division of Accenture LTD, a Bermuda corporation, is heading one of the bidder groups. (Haven't we already heard of them?)
Accenture has 129,000 employees involved in management consulting, technology services and outsourcing worldwide, including about 100 in Indiana. (No, actually, they are based in Bermuda. Little to No taxes. Voila!)
• IBM and Affiliate Computer Services are heading the other bidder group. (I still wonder why IBM dropped the suit last time? Do you think there will be another?)
Information-technology company IBM has 341,750 employees worldwide and a services segment that offers business performance transformation services, business transformation outsourcing, engineering and technology services.
Dallas-based ACS is a provider of diversified business process outsourcing and information technology outsourcing solutions to commercial and government clients with 52,000 employees worldwide.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
Consortiums headed by IBM and Accenture are seeking the $1 billion contract that could become a contentious issue for the Daniels administration.
The Family and Social Services Administration is expected to announce a private partner within a month. Both contenders have run into problems with similar deals in other states:
Legislators in Texas last month threatened to fire Accenture or ban it from other state contracts following a barrage of complaints.
A partner in the IBM group, Affiliated Computer Services, lost part of a Georgia contract two years ago because of problems processing claims. Texas-based ACS also is the former employer of FSSA Secretary E. Mitchell Roob Jr.
While FSSA officials initially hoped to select a contractor by mid-May, spokesman Dennis Rosebrough said Tuesday that officials need more time.
"It's a big contract -- very complicated -- and we want to make sure we've got it right before we move forward," he said.
Rosebrough said Roob will not be involved in the selection process because of his former ties to ACS.
Privatizing the agency's applications and eligibility review process is intended to improve service to needy Hoosiers, while reducing errors and the expense to taxpayers. (Nope, sorry guys, but it won't....it'll actually cost you millions in Federal funds)
"No one can really argue with the stated reasons for these changes," said Lisa Travis, advocacy and education coordinator for the Indiana Institute for Working Families.
"But we are not aware of any other state doing so much, so fast, and there is no cost-benefits analysis that shows there will be a savings to taxpayers or improvements in services." (Yep. This was mentioned about TX too! And "we" didn't listen.....)
Travis and others contend the process to award the 10-year contract has limited legislative oversight and few opportunities for client, advocate or service provider input.
A similar effort to privatize welfare functions has run into problems in Texas.
State legislators upset about Accenture's handling of a pilot program to manage applications for food stamps, Medicaid and Temporary Aid to Needy Families in two counties have delayed taking the project statewide.
"Unfortunately, there was little testing of the new system before the rollout," State Rep. Dawnna Dukes said in an e-mail response to questions about Accenture's performance in Texas.
Dukes, a Democrat from Austin, said many of the responsibilities initially handed over to Accenture in January have been returned to state employees.
Staffing shortages and technical problems also have caused a backlog of thousands of applications, which delayed approval of benefits for some and improperly terminated benefits for others.
Jim McAvoy, spokesman for the Bermuda-based Accenture LTD, said pilot programs are designed to work out bugs in new systems and blamed some of the Texas problems on new eligibility rules instituted this year. (What are they going to do next year when the policies change again? My God! How stupid do they think we are!?! )
"You set up these systems. You test and you establish a basic benchmark," he explained. "You understand better and you re-engineer the system to meet demand and to solve issues."
An IBM spokesman said he could not comment on the proposal Tuesday.
Rosebrough said Roob and other state leaders knew there was a possibility Roob's former employer would be a bidder "because there are only a limited number of companies who provide these services."
Roob has delegated responsibility for the project to James Robertson IV, director of the agency's division of family resources, said Rosebrough.
Once a firm is selected to do the work in Indiana, Rosebrough said, state officials will negotiate final details of the contract, including the cost. The $1 billion estimate is based on the current cost of the work done by state employees.
None of the about 2,600 state employees involved in the work being privatized will lose their jobs, Rosebrough said, but some might be absorbed by the private contractor with pay and benefits at least equal to what they receive from the state.
Call Star reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204.
Opinion: Privatization Glitches Draw Notice From Afar
Amy Smith
Austin Chronicle
6/1/2006
You know things aren't up to par on the privatization front when newspapers in distant states point to Texas as an example of what not to do, in recounting how a private contractor botched its job with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
The May 27 edition of the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette pointed out that Texas lawmakers are putting the heat on the project's lead contractor, Bermuda-based Accenture, to clean up its $899 million act (although the newspaper didn't mention that Gov. Rick Perry insists that everything will work out fine in the end).
Indiana officials are considering awarding a similar contract to Accenture, but the Fort Wayne newspaper and other dailies are holding up Texas, as well as other states where Accenture has left its mark, as an example of how ambitious experiments like this one at HHSC can end up smelling like hydrogen sulfide gas.
Rotten eggs, in other words. "If Accenture's misadventure in Texas didn't give [Indiana] officials pause, it should have," the paper warned, adding, "Agency officials should try to find out what went wrong in Texas - and what if anything went right."
BLOGGER NOTES:
This was pulled right from HHSCs own Newslink.
It's kind of funny but I remember reading similar articles published in Mississippi saying the same things about Texas that people are now saying about Indiana!
What is it with this country that we continue to let our government rule without sense?
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
From HHSC Employees' blog, it appears that a "war" has started between HHSC front line workers and Accenture staff.
We at HHSC do not have a problem with the employees hired at the call centers!
We do have a problem with the call centers!
We do have a problem with TIERS (which is just another version of TIES...remember, folks?)
We do have a problem with "upper admin" at both HHSC and Accenture!
We do have a problem with all the lies and rhetoric that HHSC has been and is still releasing to both staff and the media!
We do have a problem with how Accenture got the contract!
We do have a problem with HHSC and the State of Texas for allowing ANYONE to make a profit from our children, our poor, our elderly and our disabled!
Employees hired at the call centers are just looking for a job, hopefully one that doesn't still make them eligible for the same benefits they are trying to issue. I just hope that the interviewers are being up front with job applicants, but somehow, I don't believe they are. If they were, the call centers would not have the turnover problems that they are having. On the other hand, getting a new job and having a computer system that doesn't work would tend to drive me nuts....but again, if the interviewers were up front.....
State workers want the same. After dedicating their lives to this agency, the least HHSC can do is show some loyalty to their staff (Yeah, I've read the emails about how much we're appreciated and so forth, but that's just the same rhetoric. Don't tell me what a good job I'm doing and then give me a pink slip the next week!).
We have managed to do our jobs well with the so-called "outdated" SAVERR system. The system may have been designed in the 70s but it's still working. And whatever happened to IT saying they could have converted SAVERR to a WINDOWS based environment for less than 100K?
Ssshhhh.....Don't tell anyone because I have a friend at this great company called Accenture who really needs to make more money and the best way is to get another State contract!
Like they don't have enough already? Like they've done a really good job in the other states? What about the other countries? What about the US Marines?
We all know that this is NOT going to work. The only difference is the head honchos will not admit it. They have too much invested now and don't want to admit they were wrong. If they did, they might have to admit that their intentions were NOT to serve the good people of Texas, but to line their own pockets and those of their friends.
And who cares about fraud? Who cares that most of the fraudulent cases are caught by the worker in the face-to-face interview? On site, in the same town. There really is alot to be said about a one on one relationship with your worker. How would you like to go to school and have a different teacher every day? Or go to a different doctor each time? (Why are PCPs required?)
How about not having your own personal insurance agent that you can go to and discuss your issues? I could go on but you get the point.
Call centers are effective in certain industries, but NOT in social services.
Accenture has spent so much money lobbying our legislators, have been doing so for years. Maybe it's time we all stood up and said NO to big business! Oh, wait - we can't. Bush is still in the Whitehouse. And those of us who have been around a long time know that Bush tried this when he was Governor.....
We at HHSC do not have a problem with the employees hired at the call centers!
We do have a problem with the call centers!
We do have a problem with TIERS (which is just another version of TIES...remember, folks?)
We do have a problem with "upper admin" at both HHSC and Accenture!
We do have a problem with all the lies and rhetoric that HHSC has been and is still releasing to both staff and the media!
We do have a problem with how Accenture got the contract!
We do have a problem with HHSC and the State of Texas for allowing ANYONE to make a profit from our children, our poor, our elderly and our disabled!
Employees hired at the call centers are just looking for a job, hopefully one that doesn't still make them eligible for the same benefits they are trying to issue. I just hope that the interviewers are being up front with job applicants, but somehow, I don't believe they are. If they were, the call centers would not have the turnover problems that they are having. On the other hand, getting a new job and having a computer system that doesn't work would tend to drive me nuts....but again, if the interviewers were up front.....
State workers want the same. After dedicating their lives to this agency, the least HHSC can do is show some loyalty to their staff (Yeah, I've read the emails about how much we're appreciated and so forth, but that's just the same rhetoric. Don't tell me what a good job I'm doing and then give me a pink slip the next week!).
We have managed to do our jobs well with the so-called "outdated" SAVERR system. The system may have been designed in the 70s but it's still working. And whatever happened to IT saying they could have converted SAVERR to a WINDOWS based environment for less than 100K?
Ssshhhh.....Don't tell anyone because I have a friend at this great company called Accenture who really needs to make more money and the best way is to get another State contract!
Like they don't have enough already? Like they've done a really good job in the other states? What about the other countries? What about the US Marines?
We all know that this is NOT going to work. The only difference is the head honchos will not admit it. They have too much invested now and don't want to admit they were wrong. If they did, they might have to admit that their intentions were NOT to serve the good people of Texas, but to line their own pockets and those of their friends.
And who cares about fraud? Who cares that most of the fraudulent cases are caught by the worker in the face-to-face interview? On site, in the same town. There really is alot to be said about a one on one relationship with your worker. How would you like to go to school and have a different teacher every day? Or go to a different doctor each time? (Why are PCPs required?)
How about not having your own personal insurance agent that you can go to and discuss your issues? I could go on but you get the point.
Call centers are effective in certain industries, but NOT in social services.
Accenture has spent so much money lobbying our legislators, have been doing so for years. Maybe it's time we all stood up and said NO to big business! Oh, wait - we can't. Bush is still in the Whitehouse. And those of us who have been around a long time know that Bush tried this when he was Governor.....
Monday, May 29, 2006
Privatized services stumbling
Defenders say savings, efficiency in social aid programs will take time
01:04 AM CDT on Sunday, May 28, 2006
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Texas' health and welfare agencies are undertaking the most sweeping and rapid privatization of social services in the country, but the experiments are plagued with problems.
Tens of thousands of aid recipients can't get through to privately run call centers. Thousands more poor families are complaining that their children were wrongly denied health insurance. At state hospitals and schools for the mentally impaired, head nurses must slog through new and burdensome online payroll duties.
Conservative policymakers who championed privatization predicted it would save money and make services more efficient. But so far, the state has had to dial back its savings estimates and rescind planned layoffs of hundreds of eligibility workers.
Liberal policy analysts and advocates for the poor say Texas rushed into outsourcing without a good plan or enough testing. Some lawmakers in both parties vow to re-evaluate the push, especially before the state begins next year to privatize a highly sensitive task – caring for abused and neglected children.
Others, such as conservative commentators and Albert Hawkins, Gov. Rick Perry's point man on social services, defend privatization. They insist change will be worth the initial pain as private firms help the state trim administrative fat, verify recipients are eligible and better serve the needy.
And, they note, privatization is here to stay, because Republican legislative leaders won't go back to – or pay for – old ways of checking eligibility and running programs.
"It makes so much sense that the only reason that someone would be opposed to this is that they're beholden to state employees," said former Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, R-Burleson. She pushed through the 2003 law that strongly encouraged using privately run call centers and other cost-cutting techniques.
Ms. Wohlgemuth said she's "absolutely astounded" that critics "would like to take this system back to the dark ages," when employed adults had to take off work to go to field offices and wait in lines to apply for benefits for their children.
Celia Hagert, an expert on food stamps who monitors the call-center push for the progressive Center for Public Policy Priorities, said the state has actually had to spend more to determine eligibility. The state cancelled 1,000 layoffs this month and has sent managers and workers to various cities to fix glitches, she said.
"We've deployed an untested, badly performing system that's causing people to lose benefits," Ms. Hagert said, noting that 108,000 fewer children are enrolled in health insurance programs than were six months ago. State agencies "are asking the Legislature for more money to keep the administrative functions afloat. The exact opposite of what they promised is what's happening now."
Mr. Hawkins, the state health and human services commissioner, has acknowledged the problems. But he and conservative supporters say they are temporary, the result of the transition to privatization. Other analysts are concerned the problems will only grow as more state functions are outsourced.
What's happened
As the debate intensifies, the state faces a host of challenges:
•About 42 percent of the nearly 60,000 people who called a children's health insurance call center in Midland from May 15 to May 21 hung up before they could reach an operator. The contractor, a group led by Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., blamed the delays on an unexpected surge in calls.
•Turnover has soared among the $8-an-hour operators hired by an Accenture subcontractor. In one week this month, 15 operators quit at the Midland call center, and 23 left an adjoining operation that handles applicants for welfare, food stamps and adult Medicaid coverage. That's a workforce turnover of about 10 percent in seven days.
"Midland is a very competitive employment market right now," with a joblessness rate of 3 percent, said Accenture spokesman Jim McAvoy. He vowed that the company will intensify its recruiting efforts.
•Average wait times for callers trying to apply for welfare, food stamps and adult Medicaid coverage exceeded 20 minutes on six days in March. Waits dropped to under a minute or two in April. But on two days this month, they leapt to about 13 minutes.
Mr. McAvoy attributed the surge to a state demand that each operator receive at least 40 hours of extra training. "The good news is we are already seeing results" from that training, he said.
•The state said this month that a call center run by Accenture in San Antonio can't perform its main job – gathering all information needed so a state worker can quickly decide on applications by adults in a tryout area, Travis and Hays counties. Computer systems don't talk to one another and don't allow the state to track how fast cases are resolved, said Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission.
•Repeated delays in rolling out the system beyond metropolitan Austin forced the state to offer $1,800 retention bonuses to 1,000 state workers whose jobs were scheduled to be eliminated this year; 900 others will still get pink slips. More than 2,000 have quit and have not been replaced since October 2004. (Other than to insure children, Dallas-area residents probably won't start using the call centers until next year.)
•Low-level and midlevel managers, especially those who oversee dozens of employees at state mental hospitals and schools for the retarded, have complained that they can't care for patients and students because a separate outsourcing has saddled them with time-consuming payroll and time card processing tasks.
The state shifted duties of nearly 500 human resources workers in the five agencies that Mr. Hawkins oversees to Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati. It has promised "enhancements" that will ease criticism by Mr. Hawkins and the affected managers.
"What Texas is attempting to do is a radical transformation of service delivery," said Stacy Dean, a former federal budget official who monitors privatization efforts for the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.
She said the state ignored warnings that fast changes would be a technological and human gamble.
Florida spent fours years testing a similar though mostly state-run system, and Pennsylvania, Washington and Utah bit off only small chunks of the job for starters, she said. But Texas officials tried to award an $899 million contract and convert the whole state in 14 months.
"They thought they could pull it off without testing the waters," Ms. Dean said. "It's that sort of Lone Star bravado – 'we can do it when nobody else can, and experience from other states isn't relevant.' "
But Jason Turner of the conservative Heritage Foundation describes Texas as an innovative defender of taxpayers.
"Looking beyond the government service-delivery monopoly for improvements ... has a long and well-established pedigree," said Mr. Turner, who favored private competition as a designer of former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson's welfare overhauls and as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's welfare commissioner.
The early bumps in Texas are no surprise, Mr. Turner said.
"When major systems undergo a changeover from public to private, start-up failures of various kinds always occur," he said.
Political effects
Still, early problems have put Republicans – in both Austin and Washington – on the defensive.
Last week, Texas' eligibility call centers were debated briefly on the floor of the U.S. House. Democrats offered a provision to shut down Texas' plan but relented.
Twenty Republicans from Texas circulated a letter urging colleagues to allow the experiment to go forward. They said it will offer convenient, after-hours service to the state's poor and feeble.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, an independent candidate for governor, has accepted the invitation of one moderate Republican and two liberal Democrats in the Legislature to scrutinize the call center contract. She has accused Mr. Perry of implementing the plan "in haste" and has said the contract creates conditions ideal for "profiteering."
In the Legislature, even Republicans have criticized the call centers.
"We should have moved much more quickly to act on the problems," said Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, who heads the Senate committee overseeing health and welfare programs. She called the call center problems "inexcusable" and said, "Either get the problems fixed or I assume it would be a violation of the contract, and yank it back."
Mr. Hawkins hasn't financially penalized Accenture's group over the problems, though he says he's considering it.
And he concedes that savings have been minimal so far. But he said changes were inevitable because of recent budget cuts.
"Some people, when they're looking at something new, tend to compare against some ideal or something that was perfect," Mr. Hawkins said. "Well, the old system wasn't perfect, either."
Rep. Vilma Luna, D-Corpus Christi, a key House budget writer, says the state shouldn't have put itself at the mercy of private contractors. But she predicts that it won't pull back.
"I don't know where we will end up," Ms. Luna said. "My sense is there will be some effort to make the call center model work. But it may have to be modified."
E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
Gauging gains and setbacks
Here's a look at the progress of the state's efforts to outsource social services:
WHAT: Call centers and new eligibility system
COST: $899 million for a five-year contract
PRECEDENT: Some. About 60 percent of the money is for new privatization. The rest reflects computer and children's health insurance call-center duties formerly performed by other vendors.
WHO: Texas Access Alliance, led by Accenture Ltd.'s U.S. subsidiary
WHEN: Awarded in June 2005
PROGRESS: Uneven. Delays in the rollout have cost the alliance $50 million in variable fees, state officials say. The vendor says it expects to make that up with higher program enrollments than the state projects. The state is weighing penalties for poor performance.
WHAT: Processing of payroll, benefits, job applications and performance reviews for the state's five health and human services agencies and their 46,000 employees
COST: $85 million for a five-year contract
PRECEDENT: None
WHO: Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati
WHEN: Awarded in October 2004
PROGRESS: Uneven. Though 95 percent of employees have gone online to perform self-service transactions, many middle managers who now must track subordinates' time have complained that the system is unwieldy and that they can't get help and weren't trained properly.
Convergys says fixes will be complete by July. Delays last fall cost it $535,000 in fees.
WHAT: State care of abused and neglected children removed from their homes
COST: Unknown
PRECEDENT: While Child Protective Services previously had outsourced most foster home recruitment and adoption placement, it plans to eliminate by 2011 the jobs of about 1,000 conservatorship caseworkers. Management of children's therapies and work with families seeking reunification will be handed off to private agencies.
WHO: There probably will be multiple contractors.
WHEN: The first contract, to oversee the San Antonio region, is expected to be issued by Sept. 30, 2007.
PROGRESS: The state sought bids on May 1.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
01:04 AM CDT on Sunday, May 28, 2006
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Texas' health and welfare agencies are undertaking the most sweeping and rapid privatization of social services in the country, but the experiments are plagued with problems.
Tens of thousands of aid recipients can't get through to privately run call centers. Thousands more poor families are complaining that their children were wrongly denied health insurance. At state hospitals and schools for the mentally impaired, head nurses must slog through new and burdensome online payroll duties.
Conservative policymakers who championed privatization predicted it would save money and make services more efficient. But so far, the state has had to dial back its savings estimates and rescind planned layoffs of hundreds of eligibility workers.
Liberal policy analysts and advocates for the poor say Texas rushed into outsourcing without a good plan or enough testing. Some lawmakers in both parties vow to re-evaluate the push, especially before the state begins next year to privatize a highly sensitive task – caring for abused and neglected children.
Others, such as conservative commentators and Albert Hawkins, Gov. Rick Perry's point man on social services, defend privatization. They insist change will be worth the initial pain as private firms help the state trim administrative fat, verify recipients are eligible and better serve the needy.
And, they note, privatization is here to stay, because Republican legislative leaders won't go back to – or pay for – old ways of checking eligibility and running programs.
"It makes so much sense that the only reason that someone would be opposed to this is that they're beholden to state employees," said former Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, R-Burleson. She pushed through the 2003 law that strongly encouraged using privately run call centers and other cost-cutting techniques.
Ms. Wohlgemuth said she's "absolutely astounded" that critics "would like to take this system back to the dark ages," when employed adults had to take off work to go to field offices and wait in lines to apply for benefits for their children.
Celia Hagert, an expert on food stamps who monitors the call-center push for the progressive Center for Public Policy Priorities, said the state has actually had to spend more to determine eligibility. The state cancelled 1,000 layoffs this month and has sent managers and workers to various cities to fix glitches, she said.
"We've deployed an untested, badly performing system that's causing people to lose benefits," Ms. Hagert said, noting that 108,000 fewer children are enrolled in health insurance programs than were six months ago. State agencies "are asking the Legislature for more money to keep the administrative functions afloat. The exact opposite of what they promised is what's happening now."
Mr. Hawkins, the state health and human services commissioner, has acknowledged the problems. But he and conservative supporters say they are temporary, the result of the transition to privatization. Other analysts are concerned the problems will only grow as more state functions are outsourced.
What's happened
As the debate intensifies, the state faces a host of challenges:
•About 42 percent of the nearly 60,000 people who called a children's health insurance call center in Midland from May 15 to May 21 hung up before they could reach an operator. The contractor, a group led by Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., blamed the delays on an unexpected surge in calls.
•Turnover has soared among the $8-an-hour operators hired by an Accenture subcontractor. In one week this month, 15 operators quit at the Midland call center, and 23 left an adjoining operation that handles applicants for welfare, food stamps and adult Medicaid coverage. That's a workforce turnover of about 10 percent in seven days.
"Midland is a very competitive employment market right now," with a joblessness rate of 3 percent, said Accenture spokesman Jim McAvoy. He vowed that the company will intensify its recruiting efforts.
•Average wait times for callers trying to apply for welfare, food stamps and adult Medicaid coverage exceeded 20 minutes on six days in March. Waits dropped to under a minute or two in April. But on two days this month, they leapt to about 13 minutes.
Mr. McAvoy attributed the surge to a state demand that each operator receive at least 40 hours of extra training. "The good news is we are already seeing results" from that training, he said.
•The state said this month that a call center run by Accenture in San Antonio can't perform its main job – gathering all information needed so a state worker can quickly decide on applications by adults in a tryout area, Travis and Hays counties. Computer systems don't talk to one another and don't allow the state to track how fast cases are resolved, said Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission.
•Repeated delays in rolling out the system beyond metropolitan Austin forced the state to offer $1,800 retention bonuses to 1,000 state workers whose jobs were scheduled to be eliminated this year; 900 others will still get pink slips. More than 2,000 have quit and have not been replaced since October 2004. (Other than to insure children, Dallas-area residents probably won't start using the call centers until next year.)
•Low-level and midlevel managers, especially those who oversee dozens of employees at state mental hospitals and schools for the retarded, have complained that they can't care for patients and students because a separate outsourcing has saddled them with time-consuming payroll and time card processing tasks.
The state shifted duties of nearly 500 human resources workers in the five agencies that Mr. Hawkins oversees to Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati. It has promised "enhancements" that will ease criticism by Mr. Hawkins and the affected managers.
"What Texas is attempting to do is a radical transformation of service delivery," said Stacy Dean, a former federal budget official who monitors privatization efforts for the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.
She said the state ignored warnings that fast changes would be a technological and human gamble.
Florida spent fours years testing a similar though mostly state-run system, and Pennsylvania, Washington and Utah bit off only small chunks of the job for starters, she said. But Texas officials tried to award an $899 million contract and convert the whole state in 14 months.
"They thought they could pull it off without testing the waters," Ms. Dean said. "It's that sort of Lone Star bravado – 'we can do it when nobody else can, and experience from other states isn't relevant.' "
But Jason Turner of the conservative Heritage Foundation describes Texas as an innovative defender of taxpayers.
"Looking beyond the government service-delivery monopoly for improvements ... has a long and well-established pedigree," said Mr. Turner, who favored private competition as a designer of former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson's welfare overhauls and as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's welfare commissioner.
The early bumps in Texas are no surprise, Mr. Turner said.
"When major systems undergo a changeover from public to private, start-up failures of various kinds always occur," he said.
Political effects
Still, early problems have put Republicans – in both Austin and Washington – on the defensive.
Last week, Texas' eligibility call centers were debated briefly on the floor of the U.S. House. Democrats offered a provision to shut down Texas' plan but relented.
Twenty Republicans from Texas circulated a letter urging colleagues to allow the experiment to go forward. They said it will offer convenient, after-hours service to the state's poor and feeble.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, an independent candidate for governor, has accepted the invitation of one moderate Republican and two liberal Democrats in the Legislature to scrutinize the call center contract. She has accused Mr. Perry of implementing the plan "in haste" and has said the contract creates conditions ideal for "profiteering."
In the Legislature, even Republicans have criticized the call centers.
"We should have moved much more quickly to act on the problems," said Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, who heads the Senate committee overseeing health and welfare programs. She called the call center problems "inexcusable" and said, "Either get the problems fixed or I assume it would be a violation of the contract, and yank it back."
Mr. Hawkins hasn't financially penalized Accenture's group over the problems, though he says he's considering it.
And he concedes that savings have been minimal so far. But he said changes were inevitable because of recent budget cuts.
"Some people, when they're looking at something new, tend to compare against some ideal or something that was perfect," Mr. Hawkins said. "Well, the old system wasn't perfect, either."
Rep. Vilma Luna, D-Corpus Christi, a key House budget writer, says the state shouldn't have put itself at the mercy of private contractors. But she predicts that it won't pull back.
"I don't know where we will end up," Ms. Luna said. "My sense is there will be some effort to make the call center model work. But it may have to be modified."
E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
Gauging gains and setbacks
Here's a look at the progress of the state's efforts to outsource social services:
WHAT: Call centers and new eligibility system
COST: $899 million for a five-year contract
PRECEDENT: Some. About 60 percent of the money is for new privatization. The rest reflects computer and children's health insurance call-center duties formerly performed by other vendors.
WHO: Texas Access Alliance, led by Accenture Ltd.'s U.S. subsidiary
WHEN: Awarded in June 2005
PROGRESS: Uneven. Delays in the rollout have cost the alliance $50 million in variable fees, state officials say. The vendor says it expects to make that up with higher program enrollments than the state projects. The state is weighing penalties for poor performance.
WHAT: Processing of payroll, benefits, job applications and performance reviews for the state's five health and human services agencies and their 46,000 employees
COST: $85 million for a five-year contract
PRECEDENT: None
WHO: Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati
WHEN: Awarded in October 2004
PROGRESS: Uneven. Though 95 percent of employees have gone online to perform self-service transactions, many middle managers who now must track subordinates' time have complained that the system is unwieldy and that they can't get help and weren't trained properly.
Convergys says fixes will be complete by July. Delays last fall cost it $535,000 in fees.
WHAT: State care of abused and neglected children removed from their homes
COST: Unknown
PRECEDENT: While Child Protective Services previously had outsourced most foster home recruitment and adoption placement, it plans to eliminate by 2011 the jobs of about 1,000 conservatorship caseworkers. Management of children's therapies and work with families seeking reunification will be handed off to private agencies.
WHO: There probably will be multiple contractors.
WHEN: The first contract, to oversee the San Antonio region, is expected to be issued by Sept. 30, 2007.
PROGRESS: The state sought bids on May 1.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
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