Thread regarding Gainwell Technologies layoffs

@10b I have reached out to the governor via email and social media.

@10g John, feel free to contact me. I emailed you earlier. se

@11f Good, thanks. I should do the same. Whether or not something comes of it or not.

I perform the yearly MMIS audit to PHI data. We’re going through it now … and it’s a mess.

@10j It supposedly transcribe phi data to non-phi data.

I was very involved in all of this and did my own back end querying and found holes. Live ( true phi data) did exist in the de/ identified offshore databases.

Someone developed an algorithm whose results were received. But reviewed by persons not familiar with the RDMS, as I am.

I trained some offshore personnel on the SQL servers (including the schemas) and intranet applications - and ETL processes and SA jobs.

This is a majorly bad decision made by Gainwell Technologies.

Anyway, there is a hole. And it resides in the offshore database. That the offshore personnel have full access to.

@OP We just had a Town Hall.

Someone asked the question ... What percentage of the 3,200 new employees were onshore/offshore?

35% onshore
65% offshore

How is this okay? Do these states know? I just don't understand how this is acceptable for state Medicaid programs.

I'm so livid right now!

@1k9 once the politicians get involved, it becomes ugly and public due to the climate of cost cutting. The state politicians will want to deflect from their roles in incompetence by blaming their vendors, when in fact the state IT departments are often contributors to the mess. It depends on how tied together the state IT and policy departments are in any given place. At least that was my observation. However, as a client, they have the advantage. It doesn't seem Gainwell will be able to argue from a position of strength when that stuff starts happening.

You all might want to look at how many states Gainwell has had incorrect payments. Ohio, Vermont - Bernie Sanders’ office directly contacted Gainwell due to years of incorrect payments where nurses and behavioral health practitioners had to repay Medicaid due to Gainwell’s incompetence. Gainwell also cut a check to try to fix the issue. I believe NM and TX were looking into whether or not Gainwell was going after family estates. Gainwell sued Louisiana, but then walked it back due to a procurement (they used it as leverage). Mark Knickrehm is one of the most unethical CEOs I’ve ever experienced.

Reporting to OIG won't do. It has to become political.

Reported to my state’s office of inspector general others did as well. Nothing came of it

Contacted my state's Governor and Senator per requests. I'm on board for protecting the vulnerable.

It's hard to believe, but maybe there are states who realize that they have to prohibit foreign/offshore entities at their level because there is no federal law prohibiting that practice.

I heard the term "de-identified" data on projects but had no idea how that de-identification was accomplished. That was up to the technical geniuses far above my pay grade.

@zt+1jvam81bd

We are reporters looking at this exact issue, and it would be a big help if you could talk to us about how the data is "deidentified," and about the lobbying efforts to adjust existing contracts. It sounds as though you have a good understanding of the issue.

If you could reach out to us at jholland1@bloombergindustry.com or at Celine, castronuovo@bloombergindustry.com it would be a bit help. Everything will remain confidential if you wish, but more than anything we are trying to get a better handle on the India operations.

GWT Team members, Have you reached out to your state's governor & senators to voice your concerns with the sharing of PHI with foreign actors? If not why? This may be your last chance to keep your job. The only way this will stop is if we make enough noise not to be ignored. Once you bring it to your governor's and senator's attention they will be considered complicit if their state's Medicaid data is compromised because they didn't act. It's enough to lose their seat in next election if voters hear how they sold out their most vulnerable populations. We have to stop staying silent and start making a lot of noise. I just went to my states governor's link and shared the details of this problem. Multiple GWT customers have already had their data breached exposing these vulnerable people.

There is a whole software development team in india working with deidentified phi data but the goal is to allow language in the contracts to allow them to start testing and using phi related data due to "time constraints" and "not enough onshore developers"

I find it funny that nobody has ever mentioned that CFO that only lasted 6 months. He high tailed it out of there with no job lined up. Had an excuse but he could have used fmla instead of quitting but didn’t bother. 🤣

We were all told about the NTT move we just didn't know when or how many. I heard it was 250. What we weren't told was the 3 layoff's that have occurred silently over the last few years.

c3+1jvam81b

Yes, my Telegram is @jdholland.

Do you guys have a telegram id ? Can we chat using telegram id ? If yes put it in the comment . @bloomberg

Outsourcing definition - Outsourcing is a practice used by different companies to reduce costs by transferring a portion of work to outside suppliers rather than completing it internally.

@ab+1jvam81bd

Thank you, it's a big help. If you can email me at jholland1@bloombergindustry.com I'd appreciate it. Bloomberg's security is the best I've seen, and we can also talk or text using Signal. There are just a few details I'd like to nail down, along with some the things I have found that may be of interest to you and your colleagues.

Hi

all I can say for now, having direct knowledge of the situation:

its not dozens, its hundreds of people , from different teams.

ITO (network, sys admins and managers), this one I believe it was around 100
Testing Practice (testers and managers) almost 300 people
EDIaaS (mostly developers) , around 70 people.

rumor has it there are more to come, we just don't know who will be impacted next.

when it comes to the process:
you and your teammates get called into a meeting, and there you are told that you will be rebadged to whatever company they made the deal with. which means, on a pre-arranged date, you become an employee of the new company (after all the onboarding with the new company), your employee ID with gainwell is deactivated, and you are given a new one, as a contractor to gainwell. supposedly your day to day activities are not supposed to change, but that has not been the case. we were also told we only had two choices... be rebadged or be unemployed.

we were also told not to discuss this with the client, that means the State, which is the account you work for. lets say you work for the Texas account, then you are not suppose to disclose to any Texas-State people that you are no longer a gainwell employee. If you're asked to not discuss something, I think that is a clear sign its not 100% kosher.

as for offshoring, testers, developers, managers, and IT related functions have been sent overseas. gainwell calls it "rightshoring" but we all know what that really means.

some accounts have created de-identified data sets for the offshore people to work on, but in reality, PHI its vulnerable to bad actors.

Gainwell as a whole, is pushing really hard to offshore as much positions as possible. Roles in upper management were created precisely with this goal in mind, to facilitate or in some cases even intimidate account-related management on the gainwell side to send positions offshore.

some account contracts have language that specifically prohibits offshoring, but not all of them have it. Gainwell has spent a significant amount of money on legal, to find as many loopholes as possible that will make offshoring technically possible.

Veritas, which owns gainwell, has replaced or brought onboard upper management, starting with the new CEO, to enact all of this. That seems to be the case with the VP of the testing practice. he was onboarded in november... in february we were being told that 80% of the testing practice was going to be rebadged in April 10. Too much of a coincidence.

I don't put any names here because that causes the entire post to be deleted.