After successful deployments of their respective Web- based enrollment application systems, Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County (HHC) in Indiana and the partnership of Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, Arizona Department of Economic Security, Community Health Centers Collaborative Ventures and Deloitte Consulting are expanding their systems statewide.

The Health-e-Arizona and Ind-e-App programs have achieved their goals of streamlining workflow processes, providing accurate applicant information, achieving worker satisfaction and more importantly, providing quality healthcare to low-income and uninsured residents; the next step is to broaden access for community members by broadening the reach of the systems to state and other healthcare agencies.

Deloitte Consulting helped develop Health-e-App with the California HealthCare Foundation five years ago and received exclusive rights to re-license the software and develop the program to other states.

Bobbie Wilbur, principal for Deloitte Consulting, said, "The fundamental goal of the software is to expand people's access to healthcare benefits. This is a valuable asset." Robert Gomez, executive director of Tucson-based El Rio Health Center, said that despite the community health centers' finite resources, Health-e-Arizona has helped address their mission of helping people become eligible for public insurance.

"The system currently saves the state one to two hours per application in staff time," Gomez said, of the couple thousand documents collected by his agency every month.

The renewal process alone involves some 80,000 to 100,000 applications a month. Said Gomez, "If we can capture information electronically, it will make a significant impact on our workload."

While only half of the people who come in qualify for public insurance programs, 90 percent of the applicants receive other services, such as through community programs, thanks to Health-e-Arizona.

Susan Jo Thomas, HHC's director of outreach and enrollment, said that Ind-e-App has reduced the administrative turnaround from four weeks to 24 hours and eliminated overtime help, even as the caseload has gone up.

HHC saves a tremendous amount of money on return mail with the faster turnaround now that correspondence reaches its transient population before they move on.

With accurate, electronically documented data, HHC is "audit ready," saving human resources and time for audit preparation. The system also detects fraud and tracks worker accountability.

In six months, HHC has recouped $475,000 in pharmacy costs from the tobacco settlement, something HHC would not have known it was eligible for had Ind-e-App system, designed to direct people into appropriately enrolled, revenue-producing programs, not alerted it to its entitlement.