State: Still Early For Welfare, Medicaid Changes

INDIANAPOLIS -- After nearly three months of deliberations about the state's troubled welfare and Medicaid systems, officials said Monday it's too soon to say what, if any, changes will be made.

Officials with the Family and Social Services Administration were given a 90 days to meet with IBM and the other companies that have taken over welfare intake in 59 of Indiana's 92 counties and handle about one-third of the state's 1.2 million-person caseload, 6News' Norman Cox reported.

Clients, their legislators and advocates have complained that the new modernization system, which took away in-person caseworkers, loses documents, misses telephone appointments and has lengthy hold times.

"(We want) competent caseworkers back at the local level who can work with seniors, who can work with people with disabilities, the very people who are at risk," said John Cardwell with the Home Care Task Force. "And, and when we say at risk, we're talking about people not getting medical care, we're talking about people not getting food."

Even some of Gov. Mitch Daniels' own Republican legislators said putting caseworkers back with recipients has to happen.

Evansville Sen. Vaneta Becker said administrators have trouble relating to older and disabled recipients who can't deal with computers and being put on hold for literally hours.

FSSA officials said they will require the private vendors to get things done in a timelier manner and keep better track of records. But they refused to offer any specifics about what changes would be made.

"Well, I think it's important to say there is no set what's going to happen yet. What is important to us is the results," said FSSA spokesman Marcus Barlow.

Daniels said the contract with IBM probably won't be canceled, but said the state won't tolerate poor service.

"And if we find out that the change we make is not the best one, we'll come back and do something different," he said.

One of the reasons the state switched to the modernized system was so that all recipients' records could be scanned into the system and accessed by anyone at the call center. But Becker said she was told that the records are just sitting in a warehouse because IBM said it was too expensive to scan them all.

Daniels said he'll announce changes to the system in October.