On Wednesday May 9, State Coverage Initiatives sponsored a webinar highlighting the Plan Choice Decision Support Rules for Health Insurance Exchanges, informed by consumer plan choice research conducted by decision science experts at Columbia, Penn, and Stanford Universities. Ted vonGlahn, senior director at the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), highlighted the business rules completed to date and demonstrated how those rules can be used in adopting plan choice software requirements. Participants learned how they can put these business rules to use through vendor negotiations and eligibility and enrollment system design and heard discussions on key challenges exchanges may face in implementation.
The webinar included remarks from three state respondents, who shared their reactions to the plan choice decision rules, and discussed how they are thinking about integrating plan choice research into their IT systems and business processes.
- Richard Fiore, the executive director of Alabama’s Health Insurance Exchange, described how his state incorporated language on plan choice research, such as PBGH’s and Enroll UX 2014, as benchmarks into their recently released Health Insurance Exchange Systems RFP.
- Peter Frank, the information project director for Minnesota’s Health Insurance Exchange, spoke about how Minnesota envisions including quality ratings on their exchange website, providing a concrete example of how states can use plan choice decision support tools to develop an effective plan finder tool for consumers using their health insurance exchange.
- Lindsay McAllister, from the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island, described her experience utilizing Rhode Island’s stakeholder groups and Advisory Committee during their systems RFP process, demonstrating the value in engaging stakeholders in the process to ensure consumers are encountering a positive experience when they interact with the state’s health information exchange website.
The first installment of the business rules, along with the archived webinar slides and recording, can be found on SCI’s website.
