SB1986eng 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SB1986 Engrossed LRB094 11395 DRJ 42282 b

AN ACT concerning public aid.

WHEREAS, The General Assembly has long viewed one-stop service in the human services as a vital goal in order to serve clients in the most effective and most cost-efficient fashion; and

WHEREAS, The vision of one-stop service was a fundamental reason for creating the Department of Human Services; and

WHEREAS, One-stop service became possible in 1999 when a new data warehouse became operational at the Department of Public Aid; and

WHEREAS, The data warehouse has enabled the Department of Public Aid for the first time to optimally manage the $10 billion Medicaid budget program, enabled the Inspector General to identify hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims, and given members of the General Assembly and the Department ready access to information for policy decision-making not possible without the data warehouse; and

WHEREAS, Computer World Smithsonian designated the Illinois data warehouse as the best Medicaid Management System in the United States of America; and

WHEREAS, Illinois expanded its data warehouse in 2003 to accomplish additional cost and functional efficiencies; and

WHEREAS, The data warehouse is an indispensable administrative tool necessary to comply with increasingly complex Medicaid regulations, specifically new Medicaid prescription drug benefit rules, and necessary to position Illinois to continue benefiting from increasingly more difficult-to-attain federal funding opportunities available only to states that enjoy access to prompt, accurate information from a data warehouse; therefore,

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

Section 5. The Illinois Public Aid Code is amended by changing Section 12-4.201 and adding Section 12-4.202 as follows:

(305 ILCS 5/12-4.201)

Sec. 12-4.201.

(a) Data warehouse concerning medical and related services. The Illinois Department of Public Aid may purchase services and materials associated with the costs of developing and implementing a data warehouse comprised of management and decision making information in regard to the liability associated with, and utilization of, medical and related services, out of moneys available for that purpose.

(b) The Department of Public Aid shall perform all necessary administrative functions to expand its linearly-scalable data warehouse to encompass other healthcare data sources at both the Department of Human Services and the Department of Public Health. The Department of Public Aid shall leverage the inherent capabilities of the data warehouse to accomplish this expansion with marginal additional technical administration. The purpose of this expansion is to allow for programmatic review and analysis including the interrelatedness among the various healthcare programs in order to ascertain effectiveness toward, and ultimate impact on, clients and populations. Beginning July 1, 2005, the Department of Public Aid shall supply quarterly reports to the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability detailing progress toward this mandate.

(Source: P.A. 90-9, eff. 7-1-97.)

(305 ILCS 5/12-4.202 new)

Sec. 12-4.202. Data Warehouse Inter-Agency Coordination of Client Care Task Force.

(a) The Data Warehouse Inter-Agency Coordination of Client Care Task Force is created. The task force shall consist of the following:

(1) Eight voting members, appointed 2 each by the President of the Senate, the Minority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives.

(2) Five ex officio, nonvoting members as follows: the Director of the Governor's Office of Management and Budget, or his or her designee; the Director of Public Aid, or his or her designee; the Director of Public Health, or his or her designee; the Secretary of Human Services, or his or her designee; and the Director of Children and Family Services, or his or her designee.

The voting members of the task force shall elect from their number 2 co-chairs of the task force.

Members of the task force shall serve without compensation and are not entitled to reimbursement for their expenses incurred in performing their duties.

Five affirmative votes are required for the task force to take action.

(b) The task force shall gather information and make recommendations relating to the following:

(1) The most effective flow of information between agencies that serve the same clients through one-stop shopping across State government.

(2) The creation of an overarching system to respond to requests by the General Assembly, the Office of the Governor, and the general public.

(3) The most effective use of State moneys in procuring the appropriate technology to obtain a system that can be readily expanded to accommodate the ever-growing information base in State government.

(c) The task force shall submit a report to the Governor and the General Assembly no later than December 31, 2005.

(d) This Section is repealed on January 1, 2006.

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon becoming law.