For about two years, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care has been informing doctors and their billing agents about the impending shift to MCEDT for the end of 2014. This new method of transferring data and receiving reports via the internet was to replace their “Legacy” EDT program which used dial-up modem to transmit and receive files. In early 2014, the MOH started to really push this deadline and began issuing regular reminders through their bulletins for migrating doctors (doctors who currently use the Legacy program) to get set up with MCEDT because as of January 1st, 2015, they would not accept transmissions through the Legacy program. New physicians in Ontario, for at least the last year, were not even able to sign up for a Legacy account – they were restricted to using MCEDT only.
In many ways, shifting to web-based submissions was exciting and necessary. Faster submissions, better security, better tracking of files, were all elements of the improved system that we, as billing agents, were looking forward to. It should be noted, though, that MCEDT is a relatively simple system – log in to your account, hit the upload button, pick the text file, transmit. To get your files, log in, hit download, transmit. Couldn’t be easier really.
And yet…
Problems with MCEDT
Despite having this deadline in place for over a year, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care in Ontario has completely missed the mark on MCEDT. Here are the major issues we see so far:
- The website is very temperamental. It works poorly with some browsers (Explorer), ok with others (Firefox), and a bit better than ok on still others (Chrome). The system is prone to terrible loops where you can’t log out: you think you’ve logged out, but you’re still signed in. Also when attempting your login the website keeps dropping you back to the login screen.
- The website is VERY slow. It’s about as slow as the internet was when I was checking stock quotes in 1997. This is not a graphic heavy website! There are no images to load. The data is encrypted, but it shouldn’t take longer to load than signing into a secure online bank account. Why can I log in to any other website in a split second but need 20 seconds to get into MCEDT?
- The website is almost always down! This is not an exaggeration. Since January 2nd, the day the website was launched to handle all claim submissions traffic, it seems to work until about 8am and that’s it for the day. We’ve had to re-work out schedule just so that the manager or I, or both, are here by 6:30 am so we can get a few files sent off and batches checked. When we call their tech support, after 20 minutes of being on hold, (presumably because there are hundreds of physicians and office staff calling to find out what the heck is going on) we are informed that they’re ‘working on it’. We’re also told that in the middle of the night the website seems to work well. Super.
Going Forward
Clearly, and amazingly, it seems that the Ministry of Health has completely underestimated the number of users and their servers simply cannot handle the volume now that all of Ontario’s doctors are using MCEDT. It’s hard to imagine that this is the case because they know how many doctors there are in the province and have had two years to test and fix their product. But I’m not sure what other conclusion to draw.
Not surprisingly, the MOH has issued a bulletin announcing that they’ve extended the use of regular EDT until Jan 18th, but that bulletin came out on Dec 22nd. Further, this only helps physicians who’ve migrated to MCEDT from a Legacy EDT account. New doctors can’t use the old system. Since Dec 22nd? Nothing. No updates or information about why this is happening, when it should be fixed, or what we should do in the meantime.
As always, we will do everything we can to make sure all claims get paid properly and on time, but I urge our clients to be patient over the next few months. Who knows, maybe we will wake up tomorrow and everything will be fine – MCEDT will be stable, reliable, and fast. But like my New Years Resolution of going to the gym more regularly, I don’t like the chances.