State says care‑and‑case‑management rollout has stabilized many problems but key fixes remain ahead of July 1 target

State officials described a troubled rollout of a new care‑and‑case‑management platform used by case management agencies serving older adults and people with disabilities, and laid out a plan to complete stabilization work ahead of a July 1 target.

Bonnie Silva, director of the Office of Community Living, told the Joint Technology Committee that the office oversees long‑term care programs supporting “over 80,000 people” and that the replacement platform supplanted a legacy system that could not be updated. Silva said procurement for the new system involved a claims management contract that subcontracted the care‑and‑case‑management component; that subcontract changed hands multiple times and the department ultimately terminated one subcontractor.

“We prioritized those actions to make sure that providers got paid, services could be authorized and continued,” Silva said. She told the committee that early rollout defects produced data integrity, interface and reporting problems and that the department moved quickly to address payment and authorization issues while preparing longer‑term fixes.

Perry Steinbrecher, director of the Health Information Office, said the department now has “a single integrated plan” and an enterprise‑level approach to testing, release management and vendor governance. Steinbrecher said the department identified 188 features or system enhancements that need completion to meet program and stabilization milestones; staff reported that 137 of those items remain open. He described a multivendor performance‑improvement plan, tighter contract enforcement and a plan to bring a systems integrator and an enterprise testing vendor on board.

“We have an agile software development implemented to support the continuous improvement and integration of the modules,” Steinbrecher said, describing integrated schedules, quality assurance gates and executive‑level oversight that will determine go/no‑go decisions.

Officials told the committee they had closed the majority of high‑priority escalations with a December release that reduced about 80% of escalations. They also said vendors added staff and that the department withheld payments until contractual requirements were met; staff said vendors have been required to add resources to meet the July timeline. One committee member said the department must be cautious about paying vendors when delivery has been deficient; department leaders said ARPA timing and other funding considerations also influenced payment decisions.

Operational impact and governance

Staff acknowledged that the platform currently requires “too many workarounds” and that some case management workflows that were intended to take two steps sometimes require as many as six. Silva said many of the near‑term remediation priorities were set directly from provider feedback and that the department is shouldering some administrative burdens to keep services flowing while fixes are implemented.

The department published a public dashboard that it said will be updated weekly and will track critical stabilization projects; staff also described a January in‑person vendor summit and a performance‑improvement plan and said they are recruiting an enterprise testing vendor to augment test coverage and edge‑case validation.

Committee members asked whether the system is usable now and what relief vendors have offered. Steinbrecher said the department withheld some payments until vendors met contract requirements and that additional vendor staff were added at no additional cost to the state to accelerate delivery. Department leaders said the work is in phase‑two stabilization, with a focus on hitting critical program implementation dates by July 1.