IIAV to Virginia Health Benefit Exchange ... Hold on Here!
Print this Article | Send to Colleague
IIAV to Virginia Health Benefit Exchange ... Hold on Here!
Recently IIAV sent the Executive Director for the Virginia Health Benefit Exchange a rather pointed request to revise the Health Benefit Exchange (HBE) automation RFP to include both Direct Enrollment (DE) and Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE) integration — systems that are in common use with most health insurance agencies across the Commonwealth. Despite ongoing efforts to include ED and EDE integrations, it has appeared that the Exchange will not move forward with the basic systems development and planning to solve agent interaction with the Exchange until a later date — possibly next year or beyond.
“Beyond belief. A lot of effort is going into the planning and systems for 32 Navigators (yes, 32 statewide) and ignoring the systems integration of close to 29,000 licensed health agents,” noted IIAV President & CEO Bob Bradshaw. “Every time the Exchange Advisory Committee meets, I hear the same appeal for systems to allow integration with the companies and agents and the answer always seems to be the same, ‘we’ll get to it’.”
Some in the industry argue for patience. Hopeful that after a consideration of the capacities offered by Get Insured’s platform, broker and agent portal and mobile applications that there will be a better understanding of what challenges remain. They are pretty sure they are designed to eliminate or greatly reduce manual inputs. Let’s at least give them a chance to demo their capabilities.
The demo of GetInsured’s capabilities will be rolled out shortly. “I hate to second guess a process, and of course there’s time and money involved, but agents have been asking for the functionality for some time,” noted Bradshaw. “Agents aren’t bored and if the VHBE makes it difficult for agents to enroll consumers to the Exchange, it’s the consumer who will be disadvantaged.”
