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Health Services Department, Mental Health Division, recommending adoption of Resolution discharging the department of accountability for the collection of debtor accounts owed to the County, pursuant to Government Code Sections 25257 through 25259.
Resolution 109-2009
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Fiscal Impact/Change to Net County Cost: None. The debts totaling $362,209 are considered uncollectible and therefore were not included in the Department’s FY 08-09 projected revenues.
Background: In 2005, El Dorado County entered into the Regional Mental Health System Coalition Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) with eight other counties. The purpose of the JPA was to implement and maintain an automated mental health data system. On July 1, 2007, as a member of the JPA, the Department installed a new computer system, AVATAR, to be utilized for processing all future accounts receivable. This system was designed to produce three major types of bills for client services: 1) Medi-Cal, 2) Insurance and other third-party groups, and 3) direct client billings.
The prior accounts receivable system, ECHO, was deactivated in 2007 and the Department opted to manually enter only the total account balances to the new AVATAR system instead of interfacing the billing detail into the new system. The lack of billing detail in the new AVATAR system has proven to be problematic related to the generation of direct client billings.
Reason for Recommendation: The Department is currently billing both Medi-Cal and insurance/third-party payors, on a timely and regular basis. However, the direct client billings have not been generated since July 2007 when the ECHO system was still in use. To date, direct client bills have not been generated from the current AVATAR system because there is no reasonable way to itemize the bills for the carried forward balances to reflect specific services provided and dates of those services.
Due to the age of these accounts and the failure to generate timely billings,...
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