The New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) yesterday announced a new partnership aimed at creating greater efficiency and innovation in county government through the use of Salient's Muni-Minder performance management solution. Best known for its ability to closely discover and track Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse, the software also creates efficiencies in the management of other public sector agencies and programs.

"At a time when counties are asked to provide more programs and services with less revenue," said NYSAC Executive Director Stephen J. Acquario, "we are discovering technology applications that can help counties be much more efficient. Salient's Muni-Minder software is one of those applications, and we are pleased to bring it to the attention of our member counties."

Muni-Minder is a high performance system for managing public sector business processes. It can be used to manage activities such as human services programs, including Medicare and welfare; emergency services; public works; and revenue collections to name a few. The end result is a comprehensive view of government operations that gives users a powerful, interactive tool to investigate, monitor and optimize the efficiency of public-sector programs.

"Salient's program not only identifies potential cost savings, it also provides a way to increase government accountability, which is being demanded by taxpayers across the state," Acquario added.

To date, New York's Chemung and Onondaga counties have already contracted with Salient to use the software program to monitor and track Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse. These two counties are also slated to implement the Welfare-to-Work Performance Management module to help manage federal mandates in the welfare-to-work program.

"The versatility of Muni-Minder makes it a wise investment for county government. It can be used to identify questionable Medicaid claims, and it can be used to track the effectiveness of many other programs and services as well. It's broad-based flexibility and effectiveness is what sets it apart from other performance management tools," said Acquario.

KW