The whole system is FUBAR
Via LVRJ
Catastrophic.
Appalling.
A failure.
A disaster.
The board of directors of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange delivered those brutal reviews of the exchange’s Nevada Health Link website and call center Thursday, even as exchange officials and site vendor Xerox said they’re fixing wide-ranging technical problems afflicting the marketplace created by the federal Affordable Care Act.
Also discussed Thursday: More than 30,000 pieces of consumer communications, including emails, letters and faxes, have gone unanswered. And a Las Vegas man testified that he never could verify that he actually had the coverage he paid for, and he has run up $407,000 in medical debt since a Jan. 3 triple bypass.
Board members said it is time for a “disaster recovery plan” with options including firing Xerox, hiring a new vendor or joining the federal exchange.
“We have to have an incredibly candid conversation about what the facts are so we can fix this,” board Vice Chairwoman Lynn Etkins said. “To describe January as a difficult month is an understatement. I think this is catastrophic.”
Etkins was responding to a report from Executive Director Jon Hager, who pointed to three primary errors that have hurt enrollment: a page telling consumers the site was having technical difficulties and to come back later; a “no plans available” error message; and a “generic unresolvable error” that would trap consumers entering inconsistent data. The first two have mostly been patched, and the third is happening less frequently, he said.
He added that website errors kept the exchange from sending enrollee information to insurance carriers and caused invoicing problems in January.
But he said exchange officials have worked with Xerox to cut system problems. Xerox has tripled the developers working on the site, and it has boosted its call center employee count to 188, exceeding the 155 it needs to handle call volumes. The company also has about 80 more customer service representatives in training. Average wait times, as long as an hour in January, have dropped to as little as two minutes. Xerox has also created a separate hotline for insurance brokers staffed by experienced service reps to handle multiple complicated cases.
Xerox, which has a $72 million contract to build the site, also has added project managers and business analysts for the exchange, Hager said.
Still, the disastrous rollout means the exchange won’t meet its March 31 enrollment goal of 118,000 Nevadans, Hager said. He has downgraded the expectation to 50,000 enrollees.
HT 4MNR