System fault due to 'human error' led to wrong healthcare subsidies for 7,700 people: MOH, NCS

SINGAPORE — About 7,700 people have received wrong healthcare subsidies due to a computer system error, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Saturday (Feb 16).

The affected individuals make up 17 per cent of the patients who applied for and renewed their Community Health Assistance Scheme (Chas) cards between Sept 18 and Oct 10 last year.

About 6,400 of the affected individuals received higher subsidies than what they should have been eligible for, totalling an estimated S$2 million. They will not have to return the additional funds, said MOH.

Another 1,300 received lower subsidies than what they should have been eligible for. The total amount, estimated to be about S$400,000, will be reimbursed.

The error occurred when an engineer deployed the wrong version of a software file into the computer system run by IT vendor NCS, which caused it to miscalculate the means-test results of these individuals. A means test is used to determine the amount of subsidies each Chas applicant is eligible for.

Chas allows Singaporeans from lower- and middle-income households to receive subsidies for medical and dental care at more than 1,000 private general practitioners (GPs) and 700 dental clinics islandwide.

Among the affected individuals, some had their Chas subsidies affected, while others had subsidies under other schemes, such as MediShield Life premiums, affected, MOH said.

Aside from Chas, MOH said the error affected:

• specialist outpatient clinic and drug subsidies at public healthcare institutions

• MediShield Life premium subsidies

• subsidies and grants for intermediate and long-term care services (such as community hospitals, nursing homes, disability homes, day and home care)

• disability assistance schemes.

The engineer had made the mistake on Sept 16 when NCS was migrating its systems from one government data centre to another.

As a result, the computer system failed to retrieve the requisite income data from the CPF Board, leading to inaccurate computations of patients’ incomes.

The inaccurate income calculations meant that some patients ended up categorised into the wrong subsidy tiers under Chas, or had their subsidies for other schemes affected.

Chas card applicants who had received a Blue Chas card (allowing for higher subsidies), but who should have received an Orange Chas card (lower subsidies), may continue to receive Chas Blue benefits for the rest of the duration of the card’s validity, MOH said.  

The ministry added that it intends to recover from NCS “the costs and expenses incurred as a result of this incident, as allowed for under our contract”.

Speaking at a media briefing, NCS deputy chief executive officer Ng Kuo Pin said this was "an isolated case of human error" and the employee had been counselled.

“As a vendor, we are accountable to MOH, our client, but we regret the error and inconvenience caused to our fellow Singaporeans,” he added.

WHY IT TOOK SOME TIME FOR MATTER TO BE RESOLVED, MADE PUBLIC

In response to TODAY's queries on why it took about two months for NCS to determine that the miscalculations were due to a system error, the company said "extensive investigations had to be done to confirm the root cause of the error".

While the applications team had begun investigations from Sept 24, it was unable to pinpoint the root cause until Nov 29, and had thought it could be a result of intermittent network issue, said NCS.

It added that the investigation was made more difficult as the issue was fixed on Oct 10 — this meant that the team had less scope to test the system for the error. While the fix prevented more means-test results being affected, it did not resolve the incorrect means test results generated earlier. 

MOH said that on Dec 5, it received NCS’ assessment that the glitch "could have affected thousands of people across multiple schemes".

More than two months lapsed before the matter was made public on Saturday.

On this, the ministry said that before making an announcement, it was important to "rectify the root cause of the glitch in the system to prevent more inaccurate means test results", "fully establish the different groups of people and subsidies that are affected, and how they are affected", as well as "limit the impact of inaccurate means test results from affecting more schemes and individuals".  

TIMELINE OF EVENTS:

Sept 16: NCS began the system migration to a new data centre.

Sept 18: NCS began the first run of a means-test system for Chas following the migration.

Sept 24: The first means-test discrepancy was detected by the Chas processing team and reported to NCS. The NCS applications support team started investigations.

Oct 10: An NCS deployment team was brought in to look into an unrelated issue — the system was performing slowly. During the investigations, the team discovered the means-testing system error and fixed it.

However, while the team had fixed the error and prevented more means-test results from being affected after Oct 10, they did not resolve the incorrect means-test results generated before the fix.

Oct 10 to Nov 29: During this period, five more cases of inaccurate means-test results and individuals receiving inaccurate subsidies were detected by the Chas processing team. Three patients raised appeals and queried their Chas subsidies.

Nov 29: NCS confirmed that the root cause of the means-test discrepancies was due to a software error that was fixed on Oct 10 by the deployment team which was looking into the system’s slow performance. NCS then informed MOH.

Nov 29 to Dec 5: MOH and NCS worked together to assess the extent of the impact of the error.

Dec 5: MOH and NCS found that thousands of individuals and other schemes apart from Chas had been affected.  

Jan 14: NCS generated and provided the correct subsidy tiers to MOH. MOH completed its final assessment. MOH began planning methods to correct the wrong subsidies, including developing remediation plans with scheme administrators.

Jan 18: MOH and NCS corrected the means-test results for individuals whose incorrect records had not been used by the other, non-Chas, schemes.

Feb 10: MOH and NCS determined some 7,700 individuals were affected across all schemes.

Feb 16: Subsidy tiers of affected individuals corrected. Reimbursements began for those who received lower subsidies than they should have.

REMEDIAL ACTIONS

MOH will be working with its service providers and agencies administering the various schemes to contact and follow up with affected individuals by mid-March.

“We have begun processing the reimbursements and some that are straightforward will be received in about a week or two, while others could take longer as we require affected individuals to provide us with bank account information in order to effect the reimbursement,” said a spokesperson.

For MediShield Life policy holders, those who received lower subsidies than what they are eligible for will have their subsidies automatically adjusted.

Those who received more will not need to return the excess subsidies, but their subsidy eligibility will be reviewed based on the correct means-test results at their next policy renewal. MOH will inform those affected.

Mr Ng said NCS has taken further recovery action by tightening its deployment and operational processes. This includes fixing the root cause of the issue and putting additional safeguards in place to prevent any recurrence of such incidents.

He added: “Our recovery actions include conducting multiple briefing sessions for all NCS project teams to follow our set deployment protocols.”