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State Health Connector Launching Open Enrollment, New Website
By Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
02:55PM / Thursday, October 16, 2014
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Health Connector Executive Director Jean Yang joined state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier and representatives from Ecu-Health Care, Advocacy for Access and Community Health Programs to discuss the enrollment on Thursday.

Octavio Hernandez.

State. Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier.


Health Connector Executive Director Jean Yang is confident that this year's enrollment period will be different from last year.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — State officials are confident that enrolling residents in health care programs will be a lot smoother this year.
 
On Nov. 15, the state will again start an open enrollment with a newly built health connector website in hopes to sign some 400,000 residents to health insurance programs.
 
Last year the website was fraught with errors, leaving many unable to purchase insurance.
 
On Thursday, Heath Connector Executive Director Jean Yang said she is confident with the state's effort to not only rebuild the website and but also to roll out a successful open enrollment.
 
"There were just tremendous lessons learned from last year's challenge. There were many areas where we stumbled and we made sure to rectify," Yang said at Berkshire Medical Center's Cancer Center on Thursday. 
 
"The project was very different project in a number of different ways. Last year we had a very ambitious goal of building something from scratch, all custom made. That was, frankly, just too big to pull off by all objective standards. This time we started with an off-the-shelf product. It required some configuration and customization but it is really a project that is much more manageable from a scope perspective."
 
The state shed the vendor, whom many state officials have placed the bulk of the blame on, and hired a new one. A new governance structure was created to increase accountability and more time for testing was built into the schedule.
 
"It is not going to be flawless. I don't want to say it is going to be perfect. An IT project of this size and complexity and this timeline is a challenge. We anticipate work will continue after the launch," Yang said.
 
A total of $254 million of federal and state resources have been put toward improving the information technology and website. Most of the funds came from federal sources.
 
"We're doing this in a very careful way because last year there were some issues. We were caught off guard because here we are, Massachusetts, the leader in access in health care, and we had a glitch," state State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier.
 
But, Farley-Bouvier too said she is confident with the rollout this year because the state "took it head on. We said, we've got a problem and we need to fix it."
 
Yang said the organization is continually working on the website to ensure a smooth open enrollment period in November. 
 
"We've seen enough to feel this will be a successful rollout," Yang said. 
 
The state has hired and trained hundreds of customer service representatives. There will be mailings, phone calls and workers knocking on doors of targeted residents. 
 
"There is a lot of complex information that we have to convey. We do that through a number of ways. Individualized mailings are important. We are putting people in waves to make the back office workflow more manageable and spread out the volume. It is really important for people to pay attention to their individualized mailings," Yang said.
 
Now the organization is gearing up to make the massive push to find residents to sign up for insurance so that some 400,000 residents statewide won't lose their coverage if they don't sign up. 
 

Chip Joffe-Halpern, executive director of Ecu-Health Care, said the challenge will be to find everybody who needs to reapply for coverage.

Massachusetts Health Connector is looking to the local organizations - Ecu-Health Care, Advocacy for Access and Community Health Programs - to help. 
 
"Our challenge now with the upcoming enrollment period is that we need to make sure all of these individuals reapply for coverage. Everyone has to reapply. Nobody wants to see anyone experience any problems with health insurance," said Ecu-Health Care Executive Director Chip Joffe-Halpern. 
 
"I think in Berkshire County we are well-equipped to help resident complete the application process."
 
The organizations are specifically focused on helping residents who need the state plans fill out the proper forms and have an insurance plan. 
 
"It is really important that people work with people that they trust, that they know," Yang said. "There is a comfort level. It is pretty daunting stuff that we are putting out there."
 
Ecu-Health Care is primarily North County; Advocacy for Access is primarily in Central County; and Community Health Programs are primarily in South County. 
 
Octavio Hernandez, program coordinator at Community Health Programs, said the local organizations will serve a big roll in the program because they have updated records of the local people who need to enroll. Their organization understands people's needs, he said.
 
"A lot of professionals are looking to be enrolled. We need to keep an eye on the fact that these are our friends, neighbors, the people who live next door and people who live across town. All people need health insurance," Farley-Bouvier said.
 
According to Advocacy for Access Director Pat Duma, her organization enrolled more than 10,000 out of the Pittsfield office alone. The organization provide a high level of customer service to make resident feel comfortable with the process, she said.
 
"There are so many ways for the access to happen. Respect is the key word. This program is only successful because of the respect. It was well known 20 years ago that if you went to any public health agency, you were treated as 'why are you here?' and it was rude and wrong. Ecu-Health Care and ourselves were the original programs where when people came to the door we said, 'Come on in," Duma said. 
 
"That is the key to success."
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