TDMR has started a regular video news segment that will be carrying Texas Medicaid news plus relevant stories from around the country. Over the next few weeks, we will be starting to include interviews with key players in Texas.
Our first installment:
Austin: Per the Houston Chronicle, Texas legislators don’t know how to stop agency officials from violating state regulations. At the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, this led to the 21CT scandal over Medicaid fraud detection software which has cost Texans millions of dollars. The solution according to TDMR is to make agency bureaucrats personally accountable for their decisions.
The Texas senate just passed legislation which reforms the HHSC Office of Inspector General. The agency was condemned last fall for being ineffective and harming Medicaid providers by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission. Former IG Doug Wilson later resigned. The bill is now before the House.
HHSC is again under scrutiny because a decades-long project to create an enormous data warehouse to contain all agency information is again behind schedule. With $12 million spent, a contractor still has not been selected by the agency after more delays.
In Medicaid news around the country, Minnesota has cracked down on Medicaid fraud after years of criticism that it was soft. Per news reports, the intensified efforts to combat illegal overbilling has yielded millions in savings.
In Kansas, the Attorney General there announced that a 50 year old home care worker was convicted for $3,800 in Medicaid fraud. The man had submitted false invoices for 380 hours of care he didn’t provide. He billed $10 an hour.