Wizard helps New Hampshire health care

Health employees and residents of New Hampshire have easier access to information on services with the state's new Wired Wizard site on the World Wide Web.

Wired Wizard, www.nhwizard.com, was designed to enable social service agencies or individuals to get information about more than 110 health and social service programs in New Hampshire. The state's Health and Human Services Department developed it.

Wizard has two functions. First, it helps social service agencies figure out all of the programs and services for which someone is eligible. The Wizard software compares an individual's or family's income, assets and special circumstances to the eligibility guidelines for more than 70 State and community programs.

Also, people can print out copies of a Healthy Kids application for children's health insurance.

Any community service agency can use the service, but they must sign up it first. The software, training and technical support are free, but agencies must pay an installation fee depending on how many people will use the system. The fees range from $100 to $500.

The program runs on any PC with a Pentium Processor that has Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95, 98 or NT, at least 16 M of RAM and 14 M of available hard drive space.