States should get ready now, experts say

WASHINGTON ­–The Affordable Care Act is expected to provide health insurance coverage to some 32 million uninsured people over the next 10 years, many of them to be covered by Medicaid. Some experts are saying states should not procrastinate in preparing to handle the strain of enrolling them.

Mike Fogarty, CEO of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OKHCA), says with a new electronic application system in place, Oklahoma is ready.

The state is using a system designed by HP that enables Oklahomans to apply online for the state’s SoonerCare Medicaid program and receive a decision immediately. Fogarty said the system is unique.

The new online enrollment system, installed in September 2010 and managed by OKHCA, replaced a cumbersome and time-consuming paper-based process. Since its implementation, the system has processed just under 385,000 applications, reducing the application processing time from days to minutes.

“We’re very excited about it,” Fogarty said. “We’re finding ourselves bringing other states up to date on this project. It really has the potential to handle a much higher degree of volume.”

Oklahoma began work on expanding its Medicaid enrollment through a $6 million federal transformation grant in 2007. “We spent three years planning and building the system,” Fogarty said. “If we hadn’t started working on it before ACA, it wouldn’t be up and running now. It’s an enormous project.”

Minnesota’s former Medicaid Commissioner John Petraborg, now client industry executive at HP Enterprise Services Health and Human Services, says states will have to “dramatically rethink” their current process for Medicaid enrollment before 2014.

“As opposed to the traditional case worker approach, a consumer managed process supported by automation and customer service presents the best opportunity for managing this oncoming tidal wave,” he said.

There is another reason for not procrastinating. By 2014, also required under ACA, states must have health exchanges capable of providing online customer service and enrollment. Jordan Battani, a principal with Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Technologies at CSC, said Medicaid agencies are going to be spread pretty thin trying to build technology for the exchanges.