The Denver Post reported<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe lack of payments is causing hospitals, especially in rural areas, to struggle, said Julie Lonborg, the association\u2019s vice president for communications. She said the issue is reaching an unsustainable level, and hospitals fear they might not be able to treat nonemergency Medicaid patients.<\/p>\n
Southwest Health System CEO Kent Rogers said his company has been waiting for delayed payments since February.<\/p>\n
Medicaid payments account for about 31 percent of the hospital system\u2019s revenue, chief financial officer Angela Kobel said, so the delay has taken a toll on this year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo months\u2019 worth of payments haven\u2019t been paid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said that amount is equal to about $10.5 million.<\/p>\n
Susan Birch, Health Care Policy and Financing Department executive director, said the new system operated by DXC Technology will bring the state into federal compliance and will help it pay Medicaid claims more accurately.<\/p>\n
The department facilitates the Medicaid program in the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis transition has been incredibly complex,\u201d Birch said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe absolutely recognize and acknowledge that many have struggled.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the new system launched, claims from hundreds of providers were rejected for coding errors and validation issues. State officials said that these issues were from operator error, and that they warned providers to get trained on the new system before it went live.<\/p>\n
Unlike some other rural hospital systems, Rogers said Southwest Health has not needed to consider limiting its services as a result of the problem.<\/p>\n
He also said the delays haven\u2019t affected patients\u2019 costs, and he doesn\u2019t expect that to change.<\/p>\n
While he expressed frustration with how the state has handled the switch to the new system, he said he\u2019s optimistic the payments will come through soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a positive opinion about it, that it will get resolved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Under the new system, $4.3 billion has been paid in 28 million claims so far. Medicaid officials said the system currently has 98,000 claims waiting for review.<\/p>\n
When the system returns to normal operations, they expect to have 30,000 claims awaiting review within 10 business days.<\/p>\n
Journal reporter Stephanie Alderton contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southwest Health System is owed about $10.5 million, CFO says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,1141,210],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-healthcare-provider","tag-southwest-health-system"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103320"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}