Revision 12-2; Effective June 1, 2012

The first time a person is certified by HHSC, a unique client/individual number is automatically assigned by state office. Once assigned, the number must be used by all program areas. The client/individual number is used in the system to locate identification information, certain types of income, Medicaid coverage and the numbers for all Edges in which the person appears.

Individuals certified under the legacy system (SAVERR) had their client numbers changed to nine-digit individual numbers at TIERS conversion.

R-3310 Association of Client/Individual Number

Revision 12-2; Effective June 1, 2012

During application registration, a procedure called File Clearance is performed on each individual that is recorded on the Individual Logical Unit of Work (LUW).

File Clearance is a process that compares the demographic information for an applicant (SSN, name, date of birth, gender and so on) against information in the Master Client Index (MCI). The MCI is a database containing information on all individuals known to the agency. Known to the agency means the individual has been on an application or case in either TIERS or the SAVERR legacy system.

File Clearance identifies and displays individuals whose information may match the application individual. If a match occurs, staff must investigate the matches to determine whether the applicant is in fact one of these people, or is a person completely new to the agency. The purpose of this process is to avoid duplicate individual information and duplicate cases or applications by reassigning the existing client/individual number.

Note: TIERS scores a match at 100% only when the first name, last name, SSN, DOB and gender are provided and that information matches an existing individual. Many instances exist where no Social Security number is available, and it sometimes is not required; therefore, staff should not assume the person is new to the system when the score is not a 100% match. Staff must be sure the person is new to the system before creating a new client/individual number and avoid creating multiple client/individual numbers for the same person.

When an individual is a match for an applicant, staff have various options that depend on whether the need is to match the application to an entire case or only to selected individuals. Associate the application to an existing TIERS case or application, or add TIERS individuals from an existing case to the new application.