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November 10, 2014 at 12:46 PM
Managers of some state-based public health insurance exchanges are thinking harder about the exchange coverage renewal process and wondering if they have enough live humans on staff.
The service center staff at Connect for Health Colorado, Colorado’s state-based Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange, talk about the call volume forecasting issue in an analysis of service center budget and staffing needs.
Connect for Health Colorado has enrolled a total of 148,300 people in individual exchange qualified health plans (QHPs) and 2,521 people in Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) QHPs.
The exchange has 1,026 brokers certified for 2015 and can say that brokers have helped with 47,638 QHP enrollments for 2014.
Managers originally expected the exchange to handle 98,182 renewal calls from 69,835 customers during the 2015 open enrollment period. The managers now expect to handle 158,656 calls during the enrollment period — 72 percent.
To learn why call volume could be so heavy — and why the exchange managers think brokers could help save the day — read on.
1. Many of the QHP enrollees like their coverage and want to keep it.
Originally, Colorado exchange managers assumed that 69,835 customers would want to keep their QHP coverage, and that 41,901 of those customers could auto renew, without getting all that much help from live humans.
The exchange assumed that only half of the customers auto renewing would try to talk to live humans at the service center. They assumed 90 percent of the people renewing manually would end up talking to live humans at some point.
