With just 111 days left for health plans to be ready when health insurance exchanges or marketplaces open for enrollment Oct. 1, Health plans need to update technology, establish edge servers, new layers of enrollment and eligibility, connect with exchanges and the federal facilitated marketplace exchange (FFE).
That was the message delivered Wednesday by Candy Gallaher, senior vice president, State Policy, AHIP, during the Exchange Conference held Wednesday at the 2013 AHIP Institute in Las Vegas.
"We know that it's not just about insurance; it's about consumers. And exchanges are one of the channels through which many will come into the market, and many for the first time," Gallaher said.
"We are now in that hit-it-hard, get-it-done, you-don't-have-any-time-left mode of movement forward," Gallaher told attendees representing health plans, vendors, providers and other healthcare stakeholders.
Now that payers have submitted their qualified health plans to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and state regulators, they can anticipate beginning to receive comments and deficiency notices later this month, said Jeanette Thornton, vice president, Health IT Strategies, AHIP, which has been working with HHS on HIX operational issues.
"At least with the federally facilitated exchange marketplace, we are starting this week on getting that testing up and running," Thornton said.
Also by the end of the month, the federal call center will be testing operations to take questions about subsidies, benefits, co-insurance and deductibles and the federal www.healthcare.gov site will be relaunched.
In July, insurers will be able to see how their data will be presented to consumers in the marketplace, which is important as it will show how their health plan will be presented to consumers including information about pricing, benefits and networks that will be available, Thornton said.
State review will be completed around the end of July. "Then we'll be gearing up for the final signing on dotted lines, getting final approval for plans, doubling checking plan benefits, rates and plan names, to make sure that on Oct. 1, when the switch turns one, the website goes live, we've got accurate and complete information to display to consumers," Thornton said.
Testing is critical to assure that "we can connect with you and send information back and forth to those parties," she said. Many states have those processes underway. Now testing with the federal government and the next phase of testing for enrollment integration will start.
"Here is where we can actually send data to real plans to see first if those plans can accept that data and process it within their systems," she said. In August, final testing will be conducted to make sure that the financials match the enrollment.