The Maryland Department of Health is actively working on contingency plans in case the state isn’t able to access Medicaid funding as was the case Tuesday during the mass confusion around President Donald Trump’s order to pause all federal funding, Maryland Health Secretary Laura Herrera Scott said Wednesday.

“Yesterday was one of probably the scariest days that we’ve dealt with in at least my time as leader,” Herrera Scott said during a legislative committee hearing in Annapolis. “As you can imagine, there was a lot of chaos and panic.”

Medicaid payments and other forms of direct assistance to individuals were specifically exempt from the Trump administration’s order to freeze federal grant spending.

But the broad and vaguely worded order caused confusion about the impact on nearly every kind of government spending, and many states reported being locked out of Medicaid payment systems.

That included Maryland, where officials were unable to access the system before regaining access later in the day Tuesday. An agency spokesman confirmed Wednesday that access was restored and that the department was still monitoring it “amid these conflicting directives.”

Herrera Scott told state lawmakers the agency was working on contingencies in case it happens again, though she also stressed the challenges with the sudden nature of Trump’s order, which went out to agencies less than 24 hours before it was originally set to go into effect.

“We are and we have been doing contingency planning but even all our contingency plans don’t account for the suddenness of what we experienced yesterday,” she said.

About half of the $20 billion in federal funds that support the Maryland state budget go to Medicaid.

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