5 Challenges to Human Services Administration — and How Blockchain Platforms Can Help
Raj Kadam is VP of Technology and General Manager at Conduent Healthcare business unit.
New and emerging technologies have helped digitize and streamline many aspects of human services administration – improving the efficiency of state-run operations and delivering advanced services to constituents. That’s good news.
However, states remain under tremendous pressure to provide services to qualified individuals in the most efficient, targeted and waste-free manner possible. This is mission critical for government agencies and crucial for the constituents they serve.
Blockchain technology can help solve many of the challenges that human services programs struggle with the most – security, transparency, privacy and interoperability. Here are 5 of the most common challenges human services administrators face, and a snapshot of how blockchain can help solve them. For a deeper dive, read Conduent’s white paper, No Wrong Door: Conduent’s approach to blockchain in human services program management.
1. Identity management
The challenge: Systems managing identity at state and county levels are often siloed, creating downstream inefficiencies with the administration of programs and processes – and can lead to waste, fraud and abuse.
How blockchain can help: Blockchain allows for the creation of one application for multiple programs and the creation of a single personal record that follows an individual wherever they go. That way, multiple systems are suddenly integrated. This can lead to a host of benefits, including quicker access to services and the avoidance of TPL (Third Party Liability) issues.
2. Beneficiary churn
The challenge: Beneficiaries become eligible or ineligible based on constantly changing factors that vary by state or county. This results in a constant churn of beneficiaries within and across programs.
How blockchain can help: As factors that impact eligibility are made available to the blockchain ledger, the ledger can track changes, via smart contracts, to make the information available to all agencies on the network.
3. Change of residence
The challenge: As beneficiaries frequently move between multiple geographic locations, it is difficult to determine current coverage eligibility — and also what state or county is responsible for administering specific benefits.
How blockchain can help: Blockchain-based ledgers can help track current and historical data all in one place, putting real-time information in the hands of administrators which helps them more efficiently administer benefits and minimize fraud and abuse.
4. Interoperability
The challenge: The sharing of information between human services programs today is often done by periodic data swapping. This lack of automation creates inefficiencies and leaves administrators unable to quickly determine qualification among separate but related programs.
How blockchain can help: Blockchain enables the standardization of data into a single network — so when one node (in this case, one agency) makes an update, that information is automatically processed to the entire network (as data governance policies allow) creating huge business efficiencies with far-reaching human benefits.
5. Population health management
The challenge: When administrators can’t see the “total picture” for an individual or their family, it’s extremely challenging to provide the kind of total care that ensures each person is taking advantage of and utilizing the right set of resources to support their long-term health and wellness.
How blockchain can help: Having a beneficiary-centric view (enabled by blockchain), with a record of all the programs a person has utilized, can help program administrators connect the dots between claims, nutrition, medications and past history — providing a 360-degree view of each beneficiary, and by extension a more comprehensive picture of the population at large.
For more details on these challenges (and others) and further insights on how blockchain platforms can transform human services program management, download our whitepaper here.
We’re talking with our government clients every day to understand how these practical applications can be applied to their operations so we can develop blockchain platforms that deliver the greatest benefits to our clients and their constituents. If you’d like to discuss how blockchain can fit into your operations strategy, contact us today.
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