Post by Joe Cocker on Mar 22, 2014 1:01:23 GMT -5
Kitzhaber cleans house, announces reforms in wake of Cover Oregon health insurance exchange report
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber on Thursday discussed the reasons for Cover Oregon's failed launch
Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a major managerial house-cleaning Thursday in response to the state's ongoing health insurance exchange fiasco.
Among those departing is perhaps Kitzhaber’s closest and most important health care reform ally, Bruce Goldberg, the Oregon Health Authority director who's led Cover Oregon since January. Kitzhaber said he also asked the Cover Oregon board to remove Triz DelaRosa, chief operating officer for Cover Oregon, and Aaron Karjala, Cover Oregon’s chief information officer.
“We have made mistakes and we will learn from it,” Kitzhaber said, following the release of an independent report highly critical of the state's work on the project. He added that it's still unclear what can be done to rescue the exchange website and didn't rule out scrapping the bulk of the work already performed. “I’m not saying that this is going to be easy.”
The governor pledged management and procurement reforms. The reforms include a statewide inventory and assessment of state information-technology projects, as well as a review of contracting practices thought to be central to the Cover Oregon debacle.
Cover Oregon's board-management structure will be overhauled. Moreover, a team of insurance-company technology experts will assist in assessing whether the current exchange work can be rescued.
The report by First Data, underway since January, marks the latest phase of a story that has become the subject of national media attention. Though it has spent more than $200 million on its exchange, Oregon’s is the only exchange in the country where the public can not self-enroll in a single sitting.
Oregon’s health insurance exchange may have been doomed from the start due to the management mess overseeing the project. There was no single point of control overseeing the program. There was no decision-tracking typical of large IT projects. Instead, there were competing, conflicted state agencies that didn’t much like one another.
As a result, communications were poor. But managers of Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority did share one thing: A somewhat mystifying faith that Oracle Corp., their chief technology contractor, would make good on its promises to deliver a functional exchange.
“A consistent theme First Data heard in the interviews was that the continued reassurance of Oracle led Cover Oregon to believe the October rollout was achievable, and Cover Oregon, therefore, continued to reassure the state,” the report said. “Although past performance on the project indicated a history of missed deadlines and problems, the Cover Oregon leadership and the State continued to trust that performance would improve.”
The problem: contracts entered into by the Oregon Health Authority, then taken over by Cover Oregon, lacked any teeth. So Oracle faced no penalty for missed deadlines or poor work.
First Data interviewed 67 people as part of the assessment, including Kitzhaber, several lawmakers, agency directors, the Cover Oregon board of directors, project management staff, and contractors. It did not interview the six key Oracle workers it requested because Oracle refused to make them available. Instead, the company made available only Edward Screven, one of the company’s senior technologists who was not active in Oregon’s project until November 2013.
In their interview with First Data, Oracle stated that the problems were caused by weaknesses within OHA and Cover Oregon, “especially the lack of well defined, stable requirements, the lack of discipline in the change control process, the absence of a system integrator, and the lack of timely test cases.”
Kitzhaber directed the state's Department of Administrative Services to compile a complete inventory of ongoing state IT projects and to gauge their progress. DAS already had some review responsibility for state technology contracts. But developing this statewide IT portfolio will foster better monitoring and communications, the governor said.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDYQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oregonlive.com%2Fhealth%2Findex.ssf%2F2014%2F03%2Fkitzhaber_cleans_house_announc.html&ei=MCEtU7ulFZTcoASbk4GYBw&usg=AFQjCNEKR8-bHky4iDRF1x-fqg5glaNJPA&bvm=bv.62922401,d.cGU&cad=rja
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber on Thursday discussed the reasons for Cover Oregon's failed launch
Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a major managerial house-cleaning Thursday in response to the state's ongoing health insurance exchange fiasco.
Among those departing is perhaps Kitzhaber’s closest and most important health care reform ally, Bruce Goldberg, the Oregon Health Authority director who's led Cover Oregon since January. Kitzhaber said he also asked the Cover Oregon board to remove Triz DelaRosa, chief operating officer for Cover Oregon, and Aaron Karjala, Cover Oregon’s chief information officer.
“We have made mistakes and we will learn from it,” Kitzhaber said, following the release of an independent report highly critical of the state's work on the project. He added that it's still unclear what can be done to rescue the exchange website and didn't rule out scrapping the bulk of the work already performed. “I’m not saying that this is going to be easy.”
The governor pledged management and procurement reforms. The reforms include a statewide inventory and assessment of state information-technology projects, as well as a review of contracting practices thought to be central to the Cover Oregon debacle.
Cover Oregon's board-management structure will be overhauled. Moreover, a team of insurance-company technology experts will assist in assessing whether the current exchange work can be rescued.
The report by First Data, underway since January, marks the latest phase of a story that has become the subject of national media attention. Though it has spent more than $200 million on its exchange, Oregon’s is the only exchange in the country where the public can not self-enroll in a single sitting.
Oregon’s health insurance exchange may have been doomed from the start due to the management mess overseeing the project. There was no single point of control overseeing the program. There was no decision-tracking typical of large IT projects. Instead, there were competing, conflicted state agencies that didn’t much like one another.
As a result, communications were poor. But managers of Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority did share one thing: A somewhat mystifying faith that Oracle Corp., their chief technology contractor, would make good on its promises to deliver a functional exchange.
“A consistent theme First Data heard in the interviews was that the continued reassurance of Oracle led Cover Oregon to believe the October rollout was achievable, and Cover Oregon, therefore, continued to reassure the state,” the report said. “Although past performance on the project indicated a history of missed deadlines and problems, the Cover Oregon leadership and the State continued to trust that performance would improve.”
The problem: contracts entered into by the Oregon Health Authority, then taken over by Cover Oregon, lacked any teeth. So Oracle faced no penalty for missed deadlines or poor work.
First Data interviewed 67 people as part of the assessment, including Kitzhaber, several lawmakers, agency directors, the Cover Oregon board of directors, project management staff, and contractors. It did not interview the six key Oracle workers it requested because Oracle refused to make them available. Instead, the company made available only Edward Screven, one of the company’s senior technologists who was not active in Oregon’s project until November 2013.
In their interview with First Data, Oracle stated that the problems were caused by weaknesses within OHA and Cover Oregon, “especially the lack of well defined, stable requirements, the lack of discipline in the change control process, the absence of a system integrator, and the lack of timely test cases.”
Kitzhaber directed the state's Department of Administrative Services to compile a complete inventory of ongoing state IT projects and to gauge their progress. DAS already had some review responsibility for state technology contracts. But developing this statewide IT portfolio will foster better monitoring and communications, the governor said.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDYQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oregonlive.com%2Fhealth%2Findex.ssf%2F2014%2F03%2Fkitzhaber_cleans_house_announc.html&ei=MCEtU7ulFZTcoASbk4GYBw&usg=AFQjCNEKR8-bHky4iDRF1x-fqg5glaNJPA&bvm=bv.62922401,d.cGU&cad=rja
