Guilford chipping away at backlog of Medicaid cases

Aug. 19--As counties statewide work through large backlogs of overdue Medicaid cases, Guilford County's ranks among the smallest of the metropolitan counties.

With 1,556 overdue cases, Guilford had about half as many as the next two most-populous counties, Forsyth and Cumberland, as of Aug. 6. Forsyth had 3,178 overdue cases and Cumberland had 3,070.

Most of Guilford County's backlog came from the Affordable Care Act. People began enrolling for Medicaid through the federal Health Insurance Marketplace in October, but the federal government didn't release those applications to the state until January.

The county continues to see cases trickle in, said Ariane Webb, a program manager for universal intake at the Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services.

Still, the backlog continues to go down. By Friday afternoon, 1,157 cases in Guilford remained overdue out of 3,033 total pending cases, according to Guilford County data.

Guilford County clears an average of about 500 cases per week, Webb said. It takes about two hours to process one case.

The state has asked counties to clear their backlogs by Aug. 31, although counties won't be punished if they don't meet that deadline, Webb said.

Webb said she fully expects Guilford to meet the goal.

Meeting that deadline will make things much easier in November, the deadline for having all cases entered into NC FAST, the state's new case-management system.

Part of the delay: Many cases are sitting in the previous computer system.

"Technically, we are working out of two systems," Webb said. "It can present challenges, especially with regards to getting staff accustomed to working with the NC FAST system."

The state will send in workers this week to give Guilford County workers training on the software, which should help speed up workers, Webb said.

Counties again will see a large influx of applications in October when the HealthCare.gov marketplace opens for the next round of enrollment.

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