Idaho's Health and Welfare Dept. Improves Services and Operations

Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare provides services and programs to deal with complex social, economic and individual issues ranging from Medicaid to Food Stamps, child protection to disease prevention. In 2004, the department provided services and support for approximately 370,000 people or roughly one out of every four Idaho citizens. Idaho residents and businesses received $1.15 billion from Medicaid, additional payments to hospitals, Food Stamps, the Idaho Child Care Program, the Women, Infants and Children nutritional program, foster care and a variety of other assistance programs.

To assist with service integration, Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare has deployed NEON's Shadow z/Direct. The new technology will provide real-time direct access to citizens' records across multiple programs stored in mainframe databases. The deployment of an integrated services system has enabled the Department of Health and Welfare to improve customer service and increase operational efficiencies, ultimately making it easier for participants to access department services.

Prior to implementing the real-time integrated services system, caseworkers at the Department of Health and Welfare had to log in to multiple mainframe systems in order to view a citizen's participation with various services and/or programs. NEON's Shadow z/Direct was selected for its ability to provide real time, direct access to Adabas, the particular mainframe database where citizen records are stored. Shadow's ability to deliver the mainframe data in a SQL relational format allows application developers to use their existing Java and .NET programming skills to rapidly create a secure, internal Web interface. The new Web application enables caseworkers to retrieve existing client history across different state programs and receive a composite view of each participant, thereby improving caseworker efficiency and increasing the quality of service to the public.

The integrated services system using the Shadow RTE mainframe integration solution has currently been deployed in three of the seven regions for Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare, with the rest to come online in the near future.