Deloitte and the Georgia Department of Community Health declined to comment.

Deloitte is looking ahead with its “path to Medicaid in 2040,” anticipating sweeping changes that will expand its own business opportunity.

“State Medicaid leaders and policymakers are hungry to know what the future of health care holds,” the company said. “Deloitte brings the innovative tools, subject matter expertise, and time-tested experience to help states.”

Trouble in Tennessee

When Medicaid eligibility systems fail, beneficiaries suffer the consequences.

DiJuana Davis had chronic anemia that required iron infusions. In 2019, the 39-year-old Nashville resident scheduled separate surgeries to prevent pregnancy and to remove the lining of her uterus, which could alleviate blood loss and ease her anemia.

Then Davis, a mom of five, received a shock: Her family’s Medicaid coverage had vanished. The hospital canceled the procedures, according to testimony in federal court in November.

Davis had kept her insurance for years without trouble. This time, Tennessee had just launched a new Deloitte-built eligibility system. It autofilled an incorrect address, where Davis had never lived, to send paperwork, an error that left her uninsured for nearly two months, according to an ongoing class-action lawsuit Davis and other beneficiaries filed against the state.

The lawsuit, which does not name Deloitte as a defendant, seeks to order Tennessee to restore coverage for those who wrongly lost it. Kimberly Hagan, Tennessee Medicaid’s director of member services, said in a court filing defending the state’s actions that many issues “reflect some unforeseen flaws or gaps” with the eligibility system and “some design errors.”

Hagan’s legal declaration in 2020 gave a view of what went wrong: Davis lost coverage because of missteps by both Tennessee and Deloitte during what’s known as the “conversion process,” when eligibility data was migrated to a new system.

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