SINGAPORE: An error in the computer system administered by NCS caused about 7,700 individuals to receive inaccurate healthcare and intermediate- and long-term care subsidies, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Saturday (Feb 16).
The affected individuals are among those whose applications or renewals of their Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) cards were processed from Sep 18 to Oct 10 last year.
AdvertisementThe error arose in the computer system when it calculated means-test results.
The means-test system calculates the healthcare subsidies which individuals are eligible for, based on their income information. Healthcare subsidies are means-tested so that greater financial support is extended to lower-income households.
"The means-test and subsidy tiers for all affected individuals have been corrected by Feb 16, 2019,” MOH said.
MOH said no proactive action is required on the part of the affected people at this point. The ministry added that it is working closely with healthcare service providers and scheme administrators to reach out to those affected.
AdvertisementAdvertisement“About 1,300 individuals who received lower subsidies will have the difference reimbursed to them.
“Another 6,400 individuals received higher subsidies due to the error but will not need to return the additional subsidies disbursed,” MOH added.
The first case of discrepancy in the means-test results of a CHAS cardholder was detected by the CHAS processing team on Sep 24, 2018 and NCS was alerted immediately, MOH said.
“The issue was initially attributed to intermittent network connection problems. Five more cases were subsequently detected between Oct 9 and Nov 2, and a more thorough investigation was initiated,” added the health ministry.
In late November, NCS traced the root cause of the discrepancies to a software version issue on a server used by the means-test system when it was migrated to another government data centre in September.
“This resulted in the means-test results being computed without the requisite income information. NCS further discovered that their deployment team had in fact fixed the software version issue earlier on Oct 10, 2018 in response to an unrelated slow performance issue.
“This stopped further cases of errors but it did not correct the means-test results that had been generated from Sep 18, 2018 to Oct 10, 2018,” MOH said.
CORRECT SUBSIDY TIERS RESTORED BY FEB 16
MOH said that it worked with NCS from December to establish the extent of the impact, including the correct subsidy tiers for each individual under the different services and schemes. This was to determine who could have received higher or lower subsidies than what they were eligible for.
The final assessment was completed on Jan 14 and MOH worked with grant scheme administrators and healthcare institutions to finalise the remedial action plans, including how affected individuals will be informed and reimbursed.
The correct subsidy tiers of all affected individuals were restored by Feb 16.
Service providers and scheme administrators will now progressively inform the affected individuals and arrange for reimbursements where applicable.
“We expect all the affected individuals to be informed by mid-March 2019,” MOH said.
MOH said that NCS has acknowledged the error and has taken further remedial action by tightening the system deployment processes.
“Additional safeguards have been put in place to prevent any recurrence of such incidents. NCS has reiterated its commitment to being held to the highest standards as a service provider.
MOH takes a serious view of the incident, and has worked with NCS on appropriate remedial measures. MOH will work with NCS on measures to prevent such errors in the future,” the ministry stated.
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