Valley patients caught in Medi-Cal enrollment backlog
By Barbara Anderson, The Fresno Bee | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
The applications have been stuck -- in many cases for months -- and the wait for
The state says it has a plan to reduce the backlog and county human services directors say they're working as fast as they can to get
The enrollment bottleneck could have been avoided if the state had taken the advice of county directors, said
County directors wanted
The new system had glitches from the first applications last October. But the volume of applications -- both
Thousands of Californians rushed to meet a
By April, the statewide backlog of pending
In the Valley,
Before the Affordable Care Act, counties were able to process
Now, applications get stuck in the CalHEERS system, "even though it's clear and we know they're eligible," Montgomery said.
Counties also have had to sort out duplicate applications that have been sent to them by CalHEERS, slowing the enrollment process further, said
Applications can contain different information or may lack information that has to be clarified by contacting the applicant, Ortiz said.
On Monday, the
"We've just been putting a lot of resources and energy into this," said
The goal, Williams said, is to reach "a level where virtually everyone is within that 45-day (enrollment) period."
Patients who are stuck waiting for
Toscano, a security officer, said he's healthy and hasn't needed to use
Health center officials said enrollment delays are making it difficult for patients who have health problems to get appointments with medical specialists.
"The specialist will not see the patient until they have active coverage," said
Williams said patients with immediate health needs should go to a hospital.
They also can call or go to county
Williams said 2.2 million Californians have been enrolled in
And county health directors, from
In
In recent years, the county saw increases of 2%-4%, she said. "We had a couple of years where we came close to 10% growth," she said, "but we've never seen this type of an increase in applications for
Bugay said
But the work load remains daunting.
From January to June, county workers were allowed to concentrate almost exclusively on processing new
Montgomery said workers are tired. "You do need to understand while we are dealing with this we are also taking applications on all of our other (welfare) programs that we deal with,
The reporter can be reached at (559) 441-6310, [email protected] or @beehealthwriter on Twitter.
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