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Indigent care to get new oversight
By BILL VARIAN, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- Two days ago, Hillsborough officials were saying they no longer felt comfortable hiring the company selected by commissioners to process claims for their indigent health plan. The company, Administrative Services Inc. of Miami, had failed to meet a deadline for submitting financial guarantees. And a deadline was a deadline, they said. Those same county officials urged the commission Wednesday to hire Administrative Services after all. They said the situation with the current administrator of the plan has grown so dire in the last two days that it required emergency action. "It's just through a comedy of horrors that we're standing here today," Assistant County Administrator Kathy Harris said while asking for the commission vote. Commissioners supported the decision, some of them reluctantly, on a 6-0 vote. Earlier this week, Harris said she was prepared to seek new bids from companies interested in processing claims for the plan, which provides free health care to poor residents. The decision came after Administrative Services failed to meet a Jan. 25 deadline to submit a $725,000 performance bond. Administrative Services submitted the bond three business days after the deadline. But commissioners already had raised concerns about the company's bottom line and had instructed the staff to seek new bids if the deadline was missed. "We are pleased that the commission has expressed its confidence in our abilities and know that it was a difficult decision for them," said Administrative Services owner and chief executive officer William Grossman. Harris said the county had little choice. Early Wednesday she notified County Administrator Dan Kleman of new, disturbing developments under the current plan administrator, Ascendia Health Care Management Inc. of Baltimore. Ascendia notified the county late Tuesday that it was switching to a new company to supply the software that allows it to process claims. The county is ending the contract with Ascendia because it has been slow to process claims, drawing complaints from health care providers, and has mishandled as many as 400,000 of them. County officials responsible for the plan said a change in software providers could knock the system offline in the transition. That could be the death of the plan, which already is struggling from multimillion-dollar annual losses. Ascendia president John Woods said the change in software providers has been planned for months and was timed to coincide with the county's switching companies. But when the county decided to seek new bids, it created an overlap. "We're confident that we can process claims as long as the county wants us to," Woods said. "We really don't anticipate major problems." Harris and the rest of the county staff were less confident. They think it will take about 30 days for Administrative Services to take over claims processing.
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