MNsure, the health insurance exchange for Minnesota, is scrambling for help with its IT problems, as deadlines for enrollment loom and scrutiny of its troubled rollout continues.
MNsure’s board met on Jan. 8 to discuss the latest developments, including an angry letter from Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton to IBM, one of the program’s vendors, and the announcement that Optum, the IT division of health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, was sending a team to review the exchange’s website issues. That review is not the only scrutiny the exchange will face: Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles announced on Jan. 7 that he would conduct up to three audits of MNsure over the next year.
At the meeting, officials discussed IBM’s response to Dayton’s letter, sent Dec. 13, in which he cited 21 failures of IBM software used by the exchange. IBM quickly pledged more staff and man-hours to fix the problems at no extra charge to the state.
Even with the problems, interest in MNsure remains high. MNsure officials said that enrollment has topped 70,000 people, up from 53,000 on Dec. 24.
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However, problems persist. At the board meeting, MNsure’s interim CEO, Scott Leitz, said even as enrollment numbers climb, website visitors are still encountering glitches. “We’re not going to have the ideal IT system in place by March 31st,” he said, in reference to the open enrollment deadline for 2014. “We want people to use the system. But we also want to be honest: some folks aren’t going to be able to.” To cover the gaps, he said, MNsure is beefing up its call center and developing a system of paper applications for those who can’t make it through the website enrollment process.
Optum’s involvement is seen as a positive for MNsure: the same company is credited with improving the federal healthcare.gov website after it foundered in late 2013. Leitz said Optum staff had arrived at MNsure’s headquarters on Jan. 8 and were reviewing the exchange’s IT system, with recommendations expected within a week.
A more lengthy and wide-ranging examination of MNsure is expected from Nobles, who said in a phone interview that he would like to review the program’s finances, governance, and why the initial rollout was so problematic. Nobles said his audits of MNsure aren’t linked to any one incident, but that his office has a responsibility to review any large state program.
“The state of Minnesota received about $70 million from the federal government to establish the insurance exchange, so it’s something we have to do,” he said. “I am taking the opportunity to try to expand the scope of the audit to address as many issues as possible, although frankly, there’s so many I won’t be able to cover them all.”
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Nobles said he would be consulting with the Minnesota Legislature to further develop the audits. “These evaluations we do are quite comprehensive, so we will be addressing a whole range of issues, including the management of MNsure,” he said.
