At 11:05 2013-02-14, Ken Dibble <[email protected]> wrote:
A while ago I mentioned that government medical
billing software has inadequate controls to
protect against fraudulent or invalid billing attempts. I wasn't exaggerating.
I am not surprised. I subscribe to the RISKS List.
From a news report:
New York State "Comptroller Tom DiNapolis
office has released
<http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/178480/audit-flaws-in-doh-system-allowed-7-8m-in-medicaid-overpayments/http://osc.state.ny.us/audits/allaudits/093013/11s9.htm>an
audit showing the state Department of Healths
Medicaid program overpaid health care providers
by $7.8 million over a six-month period due to
flaws in the eMedNY computer system. OSC
auditors recovered about $7.5 million of that sum.
This audit arrives the same day the U.S. House
is slated to vote to accept
<http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/178480/audit-flaws-in-doh-system-allowed-7-8m-in-medicaid-overpayments/http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/U-S-begins-new-audit-as-Cuomo-tries-to-deal-with-4247643.php>a
scathing report on New Yorks Medicaid system
an analysis that could lead to a federal audit of the program.
...
[snip]
My state paid umpteen millions of dollars for
this software, and the programmers apparently
didn't even know how to do elementary validation
of data input to make sure that a date value
can't be saved into a money field. Sheesh.
Back at you.
Many data entry systems allow one to omit
needless punctuation. For example, one can enter today as
20130215
or
130215
(using YMD order). Tell me how you would
distinguish between the date and an amount of
$20,130,215 or $201,302.15. The digits -- what is entered -- are the same.
I am not a professionally trained programmer,
and I will bet you that the people who created
this software are. So much for professional training.
I take extreme exception to your
swipe. Professional training is not all that is
required. The people using the system also have
to care about what they enter. If they enter
garbage, there is no guarantee that it can be
caught. Some may well be, but some bad entries
may look just like valid data. How can you tell which is which?
And this also argues in favor of database
software (like VFP) that has unique date data
types that can't be confused with anything else.
I have news for you. VFP date types can be
entered without having to enter the
punctuation. For example, today can be entered as
20130215
Those same digits can also represent $20,130,215 or $201,302.15.
There is more to a computer system than the
hardware and software. There are also people and
procedures. If people do not take care in what
they are doing, mistakes happen. In this case, a
bit of common sense would have helped.
It is easy to make mistakes. You did so
yourself. Both of the URLs that you provided are erroneous.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
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