More than seven years — and $31 million — past the original deadline, New Hampshire officials are readying the state's Medicaid billing system for federal certification.
The certification visit scheduled for April 20 is the final step in the long-delayed process of developing the system that reimburses doctors and hospitals for providing Medicaid coverage.
The state approved the $60 million contract with a vendor now owned by Xerox in 2005, expecting it to be online by 2007. The system didn't go live until 2013.
State and Xerox officials acknowledge the process has been bumpy but said the state-of-the-art system now will serve New Hampshire well into the future. But critics say the state should've held Xerox and the federal government, which covered most of the costs, to a harder deadline.