Planning and coordination appears to be ramping up for a major health IT project that will modernize a legacy system that houses Medi-Cal eligibility data.
The current Medi-Cal Eligibility Data System (MEDS), implemented in 1983, is maintained on legacy technology by the Department of Health Care Services. Over the years, more and more users have been added.
"What's happened is it's broadened out to where we now have the Department of Social Serives, Covered California, and the three [Statewide Automated Welfare System] SAWS consortia — the counties — that all interact with that data. And it's become a critical central point of data for all of our systems, and it's even used in other state departments," said Office of Systems Integration deputy director Cynthia Tocher, during a March 3 hearing in front of the state Senate's health and human services subcommittee.
Tocher said the intent is for the MEDS Modernization project to finish the second stage of the Department of Technology's project approval process — the alternatives analysis — by the end of the 2016-17 budget year.
The MEDS system supports 35,000 end users, according to the Department of Health Care Services.
"Today the system is used for a variety of eligibility, enrollment and reporting functions specific to Californians receiving Medi-Cal benefits. MEDS and its related subsystems have been designed over many years to capture client information from a variety of different sources. ... MEDS also serves as the 'system of record' and houses eligibility information for numerous publicly subsidized health care and human services programs," a report to a California State Senate budget committee said.
It's "amazing" how many programs use the MEDS system, Tocher said. The CalWorks and CalFresh public benefits programs, along with several others, use MEDS data.
Officials expect the MEDS Modernization project will be a high-dollar procurement. For planning purposes alone, the Office of System Integration is requesting $3.7 million during 2016-17.
The state has been studying the feasibility of modernizing MEDS since at least 2010. The federal government is requiring California and other states to modernize their Medicaid eligibility systems in order to retain federal funding.
