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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, Dec. 10, 1999 		Contact: HCFA Press Office
(202) 690-6145

HHS COMPLETES Y2K END-TO-END TESTING FOR STATE
MEDICAID SYSTEMS AND GRANTS DISBURSEMENT PROGRAMS

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today that successful testing has been completed ensuring that federal, state and financial institution systems can work together to exchange Medicaid data involving Year 2000 dates. The testing was among computer systems owned by state Medicaid systems, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) and the HHS Program Support Center, which operates the nation's largest grant disbursement system.

"Being ready for the Year 2000 is the primary management challenge at HHS," Deputy Secretary Kevin Thurm said. "We are testing our systems with those of our partners to be sure that the information and data flow will not be interrupted during the millennium rollover."

Medicaid is a federal-state health services program, administered jointly by HCFA in partnership with the states, to ensure that health care services are available to certain low-income adults and children who might otherwise not be able to afford quality health care. HCFA, whose computer systems have all been certified as Y2K ready, has been working closely with state Medicaid agencies to help them achieve Y2K readiness by Jan. 1, 2000. Although states are responsible for assuring readiness of their own computer systems, HCFA provides technical assistance including protocols for compliance and testing, contingency planning strategies, and best practices. As of early December, HCFA has determined there are no states at high risk of Y2K-related problems in Medicaid systems: exchanging data, transferring funds, and enrolling eligible individuals.

As part of its end-to-end testing procedures, the HHS Program Support Center tested its Payment Management System with a number of state Medicaid agencies, which assured that state agencies could access the system. During these tests, the PSC was able to determine that Medicaid grant award posting and funds disbursement transactions were tracked from HCFA=s data submission, through the Payment Management System and the Federal Reserve Banks, to the financial institutions where ultimately the grant recipient organizations (Medicaid state agencies) obtained evidence of availability of program funds.

The testing follows the charge of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion and Office of Management and Budget to ensure that "high impact" federal programs demonstrate readiness not only for their own data systems to function in the Y2K environment, but also to function in tandem with partner organizations, including other federal agencies, state and local governments and major banks. The Y2K challenge involves ensuring that computers will correctly identify dates after the change from 1999 to 2000.

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