Consumer Assistance in the Digital Age: New Tools to Help Enroll People in Medicaid, CHIP, and Exchanges
Aug, 2012
Type:
Issue Brief
The Maximizing Enrollment report "Consumer Assistance in the Digital Age: New Tools to Help Enroll People in Medicaid, CHIP, and Exchanges," focuses on the various ways states can help customers connect to coverage and explores how current consumer assistance will change as new tools are deployed and technology transforms the enrollment process. The paper draws on the experience of states that have advanced children's coverage and pioneered the IT system improvements that inspired the ACA's vision for technology-enabled, consumer-friendly enrollment. Where state use of new technology tools in limited, such as online chat, the paper offers best practices in customer service management from other industries.
Examples of assistive technologies discussed in the report include:
- Secure online customer accounts
- Online chat with eligibility representatives
- Secure e-mail or text communication with customers
- Interactive voice response telephone systems, and
- Call-back systems that relieve the need for customers to wait on hold for telephone assistance.
The paper also includes a discussion of lessons learned in Utah about how new technologies can affect staffing and organizational structure.
This paper was writtten by Tricia Brooks of Georgetown University Health Policy Institute's Center for Children and Families and Jessica Kendall, now with Enroll America.