States didn't cooperate on Medicaid data repository, official says

The Health and Human Services Department missed its 2010 deadline to roll all Medicare and Medicaid claims information into a single, integrated data repository because of limited cooperation and a mishmash of data forms at the state level, officials told lawmakers Tuesday.

The integrated data repository, which was launched in 2006, was designed to be an easily searchable database that would help Medicare and Medicaid workers quickly spot suspicious claims and claw back about $21 billion in improper payments by 2016.

Five years in, it includes most data about Medicare claims but almost no data on Medicaid claims, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in connection with Tuesday's hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel on financial management.

That's because the federal government didn't give states a strong enough incentive to cooperate with the data storage program and states were unwilling to commit their own dwindling budgets to it, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Deputy Administrator Peter Budetti told lawmakers.