According to a Nevada Appeal Web post last Friday, Xerox officials announced that it “has ramped up staff at Nevada’s health exchange call center and is making progress to reduce a backlog of correspondence from consumers seeking assistance to sign up for health coverage.” However, a report to the board overseeing the exchange shows the company is experiencing glitches in the billing process and is still working on system defects; one board member suggested bringing in another state contractor to help fix the website problems.
As per Jon Hager, executive director of the exchange, other than the website problems, there are also “long wait times at the call center, frustrated partners, frustrated consumers and low enrollment."
Consequently, Nevada’s exchange, which operates as Nevada Health Link in helping locals find a health insurance plan that fits their needs and budget, is not able to operate, as it should, to get the information out to consumers that may want health coverage and need to enroll in a plan.
Yet, as the post states, there have been about 18,000 people that have paid enrollments through the exchange. In addition, 13,000 have selected plans but not made payments and, roughly, 54,000 visited the site but have not chosen coverage. “Those people can expect to be blasted with emails, letters and phone calls urging them to finish the process and sign up,” affirms the post.
Xerox President David Hamilton said the company is trying to track down 241 people who have sent premium payments but have not completed their application process to ensure coverage.
Because of the system failures and by examining incidents of website outages, Mike Willden, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, recommended the board consider hiring another vendor to assist with computer system errors. He sees it a necessity to be able to correct the ongoing problem, help with the workload, thus making it possible to meet customers’ needs successfully.
“Low enrollments are a concern for the long-term viability of the program which will rely on fees paid per policy for future operating expenses. But it’s also a concern for Nevada Health CO-OP, a nonprofit, membership-based insurance carrier that received a grant under the federal health care law to set up operations,” as explained in the post. “The viability of [its] startup depends on the [health information] exchange being able to get those numbers up,” said Bobbette Bond, the co-op’s project coordinator.
The Nevada health insurance exchange, operated by Xerox, has increased staffing at the call center; this has helped to assist consumers by phone in a timelier manner and respond to contacts coming in from emails. Nevada officials report the call center staff has nearly 250 employees now, while it only had less than 50 representatives when it opened last fall. As a result, “a backlog of more than 30,000 emails have been trimmed by about 5,000, and call center wait times have been reduced to about a minute,” Hamilton said.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
