Oregon To Adopt Kentucky's Medicaid Software
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Abandoning its own troubled software, Oregon opts to use an online Medicaid enrollment system from Kentucky instead.
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) announced it is planning to adopt Kentucky’s Medicaid system to enroll its Medicaid population by fall of 2015, according to an AP News report. As a result of the transition from the defunct CoverOregon system, Oregonians will be able to continue to shop for Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through HealthCare.gov while it also localizes Medicaid benefits to a state-managed system.
According to the State of Reform, OHA Director Judy Mohr Peterson addressed the specific need for local assistance for a specific subset of Oregon’s Medicaid population at a CoverOregon transition consumer tips conference. She then announced Kentucky’s Medicaid portal was an appropriate model for Oregon, based on similarities in the Medicaid populations of each state.
But while Kentucky's health insurance exchange, kynect, has been applauded as a success story, Oregon's exchange, CoverOregon, became mired in scandal and was possibly one of the most dysfunctional and expensive coverage marketplace flops in the nation, even coming under a federal grand jury investigation.
Oregon and its main technology contractor, Oracle Corp., have each blamed the other for the failures and have gone so far to have filed lawsuits against each other.
With the elimination of CoverOregon, the state will use a federal website to enroll people in private insurance and adopt the Kentucky software to manage enrollments in the Oregon Health Plan, the state's version of Medicaid. For now, both standard and Medicaid enrollments for Oregon are being processed through HealthCare.gov during second open enrollment. The new system is slated to be operational before the start of the third open enrollment.
Patty Wentz, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Health Authority, explained Federal grants supporting the development of insurance exchanges for also required them to share the software, so Oregon can use Kentucky's software code and documentation without charge, although Oregon will have to pay to adapt the software for its needs. Those costs are not yet available.
“The goal is ...we will no longer be relying on Oracle technology,” stated Mohr Peterson, the Oregonian reported. Cover Oregon had already scrapped its Oracle IT and transferred over to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov for private plan enrollments, although it had tried to salvage some of the Oracle technology for Medicaid.
The federal website will continue to be the primary place for people to apply for Medicaid until Oregon has its own fully automated system, according to a memo from Project Director Sarah Miller. Linda Hammond in the Oregon Health Authority will lead the transition project. The state has budgeted about $30 million to pay for adapting Kentucky's system to Oregon. State officials said the federal government has agreed to pay 90 percent of the new project, according to the Oregonian.