State Auditor Beth Wood says she and other officials from her office did their best to warn Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos that it would be better to wait to go live with a new system to process Medicaid claims.
The system, called NCTracks, went live on July 1st of this year. Health care providers cite numerous problems. Many say they haven't received payments from the state in months. Auditor Wood says the previous administration had a timeline of 22 months to go live.
But under the McCrory administration, Wood says, health officials suddenly decided to shorten that time to six months.
"As we became aware of some of the critical issues that might be a problem for trying to go live July one, we met with the secretary and her CIO, and pointed out the issues that we found and the high risk for the system working correctly on July one," said Wood.
In a legislative hearing earlier this week, Secretary Wos said she did not receive any professional opinions that the system might not be ready to go live in July. But Auditor Wood says that is not correct.
