Big Data Saves Michigan $1 Million Each Business Day

Big Data is saving the state of Michigan $1 million each business day, while consolidating 40 data centers into three saved $19 million the first year. Cynthia Edwards, director of Medicaid health information technology, said that the Medicaid savings have been measured by the Department of Community Health for the state of Michigan, which achieved the savings by billing Medicaid patients’ existing insurance plans when they had them, using death records to recover payments made to clients who had died, and reducing fraud.

Medicaid is huge in Michigan with a $14 billion budget in 2011 and a 1.9 million client case load. The state has just moved Medicaid off a mainframe, which has been certified to run the federal/state program for the last 30 years, to an open-source solution hosted at the State of Michigan acquired from CNSI in Maryland which was certified by the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Aug. 3...