Medicaid missing data concerns

Friday’s Medicaid Council meeting focused on concerns with Veyo, the state’s new transportation contractor, and DSS operations performance, especially ongoing call center problems. Unfortunately, we are getting even less data than in the past. Veyo’s presentation did little to counter the landslide of complaints from consumers and providers about the transportation system and missing data compared to previous reports. Veyo reported that 84% of trips are on-time, well below the contract standard of 95%. There was no report on the number of complaints, no answer on requests that policies be posted online, or making it easier to request rides and register complaints online. Council members noted that small businesses who had been reliably providing transportation services for years to vital services such as dialysis were being driven out of business by the new arrangement. Members registered frustration that problems and contract expectations are still being worked out by DSS and Veyo many months after the contract began. Concerns were also raised about DSS’s new enrollment and performance report, especially call center performance. The new report includes only inbound call volume by month. In addition to the total numbers, prior performance dashboards included information on the hours calls were received, average wait times (106 minutes in February and rising), the percent abandoned by callers (57% in February), and average wait time until abandonment (40 minutes in February and rising).