Medicaid patients can't get through to hotline, group says

12/2/2008 © Florida Health News

Florida’s Medicaid Options Hotline, which patients must call to switch health plans, remains understaffed and almost always busy, according to the consumer advocacy group Florida CHAIN.

It's more than an annoyance, the group said in a release Monday afternoon; it threatens patients’ access to the doctors they want and the treatment they need. “As a result, many beneficiaries are facing a disruption of essential care,” the release said.

CHAIN said the Agency for Health Care Administration, Medicaid’s parent agency, has known about the problem since the switch to a new vendor four months ago, but hasn’t addressed the problem adequately. the group said. No response was available from AHCA before publication time today.

The group called on AHCA Secretary Holly Benson to:

-- Suspend all “auto-assignment” of Medicaid enrollees to HMOs until the problems are resolved. 

--Triage beneficiaries who face the greatest barriers to care and move them to the front of the line. 

--Create an online enrollment process so that patients can “bypass the log-jammed phone system.”

A spokesman for EDS, which operates the Medicaid information systems and the hotline, told Florida Health News that he will check on the problem.