What Have We Learned in 24 Hours?

April 05, 2022

MES, for all of our anxiety about the roll-out, seems to be performing the basic functions for most reasonably well!   We have a few providers with log-in issues, but for those who were able to test some billing yesterday the results were good. 

For some other functions, though, it is a mess:

• Manuals format poorly, show updates on 3/17/2022 (the day they were migrated to the new system) which did not actually change anything, and print without page numbers. 
• Medicaid Memos do not format for printing, there does not appear to be a “download” function which would allow them to be printed as a pdf so they print as a webpage poorly; they can, of course, be copied into a word document and formatted (and edited?).  Since Manuals and Memos are official communication – a printable pdf version is critical!
• The search feature, which they seen very proud of, also lacks utility – while, as they suggest, you can search by year the result produces every time that “year” appears in the header or text of any memo!
• We seem to have lost the listing of Manual Updates – there is a heading for that feature, but the content is not there.
• Forms used to be grouped by service type – that no longer seems to be the case so one has to know the name of the form (searching by number under “forms” is not successful!)
• Remittance Advice Documents are not available, it will be interesting to see if the one for next Friday is “delivered” as promised.  The “payment History” links have now been corrected; so a “RA” can be printed from there.

Navigation, in general, is difficult; not impossible, but difficult!   But, bottom line, it looks like the billing system will work and that, by all measures, is the most critical!