Before putting the tools in place, counties had no easy way to estimate what their weekly Medicare?? bill from the state would amount to, according to officials in several counties.

Albany County last month began using Salient Performance Management (formerly called Muni-Minder) software from Salient Corp. to analyze data stored in the state's Medicaid data warehouse to detect patterns that might indicate abuse, said Beth Berlin, commissioner of the Albany County Department of Social Services.

The Salient software is designed to provide access to transactional data and other information for analysis, said Guy Amisano, president and co-founder of Horseheads, N.Y.-based Salient. The results are provided graphically to help users detect questionable activity, he said.

Albany County has appropriated $57 million to pay its Medicaid costs in 2007, Berlin said. Because that amount is so high, "we are interested in looking at the claims to determine if there is any pattern . . . of activity that is outside of the norm that would indicate that there might be a need for a more intimate review of what is going on in that provider's organization," she said.

Onondaga County is using the same Salient software in its effort to flesh out Medicaid fraud, Morgan said. The county paid $200,000 for it and will pay $30,000 annually for maintenance, he said.