Mismanagement is unrelenting at DHHS
Published January 7, 2014
Editorial by Charlotte Observer, January 6, 2014.
North Carolina’s Health and Human Services department made a serious error last week, then compounded the mistake by giving the public misleading information about it.
The state DHHS breached the confidentiality of nearly 49,000 child Medicaid recipients by mailing their personal information to the wrong addresses. The mailings included the beneficiaries’ names, birth dates, Medicaid identification numbers and their doctors’ names.
This serious violation of privacy was followed by actions that had the appearance of a cover-up. The cards were mailed Monday, Dec. 30. DHHS notified the public of the mistake at 5:20 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 3, about 30 minutes after Charlotte’s WSOC ran a story about a mother who had received one of the wrong cards.
DHHS spokesman Ricky Diaz said on Friday that the agency owned up to the blunder “as quickly as possible” and that the department had first learned of the problem on Thursday.
Not true. The Asheville Citizen Times obtained an email showing that DHHS and county social services offices knew about it Dec. 31, the day after the cards went out. Saturday, DHHS acknowledged that it knew about the problem earlier than Diaz had said. In a statement, the department said Diaz had been talking about only when “senior leaders” learned of the mistake.
This is problematic either way. Why did senior leaders take so long to learn about such a fundamental slip-up, if they did? And why did it take DHHS more than three days to notify the public?
This was a serious violation, but no one at DHHS explained what happened until late yesterday, when Medicaid director Sandra Terrell issued a release blaming the problem on “human error in computer programming and the quality assurance process in printing the new Medicaid identification cards.”
DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos, meanwhile, has remained as silent as usual.
DHHS acknowledges this was a breach of federal HIPAA rules and that it opens the door for potential Medicaid fraud. It is yet another black eye for a department that has made one misstep after another over the past year. Can North Carolinians really feel good about the leadership of such an essential government agency?
January 7, 2014 at 8:51 am
Keith Clark says:
When a large, complex department can impact the lives of so many individuals in so many ways, being trustworthy is essential.
When Dave Flaherty was Governor Martin's Secretary of DHHS he had three rules that he personal saw were followed:
1)No surprises!
2)Get all the facts out and get them out first.
3)Never conduct investigations internally. Turn them over to the State Auditor or the SBI. (He said, "We can never expect credibility when we clear our own selves even when nothing wrong happened.)
4)Rectify the situation quickly. (Usually an hour or less after the facts were determined.)
January 7, 2014 at 2:19 pm
Richard Bunce says:
It is what government bureaucracies do... no accountability, just more funding to "fix" the problems. The bueauracrats all up and down the line need to be terminated now to set the proper tone.
