Time running out for Xerox to fix health insurance exchange issues

Time is running out for Xerox to fix issues with the state’s health insurance exchange, and it’s looking like exchange staffers will be left to handle some of those problems themselves.

Xerox’s contract ends March 31. But botched enrollments and tax credit forms continue to plague Nevada Health Link, exchange employees told the agency’s board Thursday.

Exchange officials want to keep Xerox around through the tax season’s April 15 end because once the company’s business-operations system closes, they lose access to enrollment data. That would make it harder to patch problems.

Exchange officials said they hadn’t seen a “fully fledged, detailed” plan to their liking by Thursday indicating that Xerox will keep its 30-employee call center in Henderson open an extra two weeks.

Xerox spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer responded Thursday night that Xerox has presented plans to keep the center open past March 31, but that the exchange “needs to make some decisions so we can determine how we will proceed.”

“We are committed to ensuring there are no avoidable disruptions for Nevadans during tax season,” Wasmer said.

In the meantime, exchange Executive Director Bruce Gilbert said the agency is building a 10-person call center that will be able to field inquiries. But that won’t guarantee access to enrollees’ case information.

Xerox officials told the exchange that if they close the call center, they will assign analysts to help the marketplace research consumer issues. But exchange representatives said they have not received a plan to provide those personnel.

“I’m not worried about phone calls. I am worried about our vendor partner being able to give us timely information that we need,” he said. “Not having access to an analyst would be an issue because we have no independent way of accessing information in the (business operating system) to help people.”

Consumers who need help include people who didn’t receive coverage they paid for, as well as enrollees whose coverage dates are incorrect.

Some Nevadans have reported that coverage mistakes on the IRS forms they received to calculate their premium tax credit have left them owing hundreds of dollars to the federal government.

It’s not clear how many Nevadans may be affected, but Xerox and the agency had a “pends” list of more than 10,000 cases, or about a third of the customer base, in early 2014. That list was down to 700 by December.

Other states and the federal government have reported that 10 percent or more of the forms they’ve issued contained errors.

Xerox sent about 30,000 forms on Jan. 30.

It reissued 209 corrected forms on March 5 but has given no estimates on how many more it will send. It’s scheduled to make additional mailings on Tuesday and in April.

Exchange Project Management Officer Laura Rich said Xerox gets 50 calls a day from consumers who need help with tax credit forms. Board member Florence Jameson said that number would probably climb as tax day gets closer.

If Xerox does agree to keep its call center open, it could cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, exchange Chief Operating Officer Damon Haycock said. Xerox’s initial contract was $72 million, but it’s unclear how much the company has collected. State officials began curbing payments in 2014, when the system began having troubles initiating coverage.

When Xerox exits, it will probably leave the exchange with a number of unresolved cases. It’s difficult to pin down how many because “we’ve seen some numbers grow and increase and decrease, and there are discrepancies in the semantics of what a case is,” Haycock said.

The bulk of cases could be resolved in 90 days as the exchange works with carriers, but “one-off cases may occur for years to come,” he added.

Gilbert said the backlog isn’t that big, but the numbers change every week.

“It’s like, ‘Here’s a list of people you should have terminated six months ago,’ ” he said.

“It’s as bad a mess as I’ve ever seen. People talk about herding cats. This is 1,000 times worse,” he said. “Something that was supposedly fixed two months ago — all of a sudden, there’s a new correction filed. There’s never any certainty. It’s that inability to have stability and consistency in the data that really goes to the heart of what we’re struggling with.”