Ensuring State Open Enrollment Program Success

Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, state health and human services agencies have turned to Conduent to help ensure their individual state open enrollment programs operate efficiently and are accessible to everyone who needs them.

In one Southern state, we helped reduce the application abandonment rate by 20% during the 2013-2015 open enrollment periods by providing a stable, tenured workforce capable of responding to constituent needs, even during busier-than-expected enrollment periods. In another mid-Atlantic state, we helped quickly implement a statewide call center to respond to all types of health insurance questions during the first “go live” open enrollment period.

And in a Midwestern state, Conduent has helped promote healthcare access for more than 20 years, offering a “no wrong door” approach for people to access health coverage and other public assistance programs. During open enrollment periods in this state, we met fluctuating application and constituent call volumes, and worked to handle calls with one-call resolution, to provide the highest possible customer service to applicants and beneficiaries.

Now, as we continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted lives, livelihoods, and communities, the workload on state social services agencies has only grown, often as fast as the number of unemployment claims and eligibility and enrollment requests that arrived from people across the nation. 

State health and human services agencies have undoubtedly worked hard to ramp up and expand social support services, even as their own personnel are increasingly forced to comply with social distancing and telework requirements. To better assist everyone impacted by the pandemic, it’s important for state and local agencies to reach out to trusted partners to ensure every agency can continue to keep pace with emerging and expanding demands.

This year, the open enrollment period to enroll for 2022 healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act starts on Monday, November 1, 2021 and runs through January 15, 2022. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. residents must enroll by December 15, 2021 for coverage starting January 1, 2022.

Based on our many years of expert eligibility and enrollment support, there are a number of steps state HHS agencies can take to improve the efficiency of their open enrollment programs, including:

• Identify and recognize constituent needs – use data and analytics from previous years, and deliver text alerts and email notifications about benefits, renewals and provide other relevant state program updates.
• Provide agents with a 360-degree view of each constituent served – empower agents to best tailor healthcare program selection and the entire enrollment experience with data-driven choice assistance, which can help residents make informed and timely coverage decisions. Agents can use our intelligent choice assistant to provide an unobtrusive, user-friendly, data-driven wizard to help constituents make informed choices.
• Personalize the enrollment experience – enhance constituent satisfaction by providing a tailored experience that allows every user to choose how and when they wish to interact with the agency.
• Leverage a seamless communication plan – provide a trusted site (such as a self-service portal) to provide educational materials and state-wide program information. This can help bridge any communication gaps and augment the use of real time text/SMS alerts, automated email notifications, and provide agencies with a consolidated view of all constituent interactions.

To learn more about our Eligibility and Enrollment offerings, please visit us here or email eligibilityenrollment@conduent.com or call (844) ONE-CNDT.