NEW ROCHELLE, NY – New York’s Westchester County Department of Health is ditching an eight-page, paper-based application that residents have filled out to enroll for public health insurance programs.
The department is deploying an electronic application that it expects will reduce the enrollment process from 45 to 20 minutes, said spokeswoman Heather McGill.
“Our main goal is to see improvement in the quality of our entire application process,” she said. “We are always improving services by utilizing health information technology.”
The Hudson Center for Health Equity & Quality’s (Hcheq) Facilitated Enrollment Electronic Applicaton, or FEEA, will also streamline the yearly re-enrollment process by pre-populating the application, thereby helping to reduce the churn rate in government managed care.
FEEA automates the complex calculations that determine which programs residents can enroll in, which will reduce the human error rate that causes eligibility delays and increased staff time for follow-up.
McGill said the department will track enrollment and evaluate processing time but anticipates saving $2,500 per year on postage and redirecting staff time to conduct greater outreach and enroll more residents into programs.
Hudson Health Plan, which created the nonprofit Hcheq to promote high quality healthcare for all people, used a Westchester Community Foundation $25,000 grant to train department staff and set up the system.
Hudson Health Plan, a not-for-profit managed care organization that provides coverage to more than 65,000 members in New York’s Hudson Valley, will benefit from FEEA’s deployment by eliminating printouts of the multi-page state applications and photocopies of supporting documents.
At $2 per application and 50,000 to 75,000 applications submitted annually, the health plan will save money, time, paper and space.
Hcheq is working with Westchester County to electronically transmit the applications and with the New York City Human Resources Administration to receive and process the applications from the local districts.
“This next absolutely huge step will establish reciprocal communications with the districts,” said Georganne Chapin, founder and president of Hcheq.