Health Connector promises fewer glitches, faster system

The Hawaii Health Connector, in its final stretch of open enrollment, says it has fixed a substantial number of system glitches that have frustrated consumers and stifled enrollment.

Officials of the state-based insurance exchange, created as part of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, are urging the 16,348 Hawaii applicants who didn’t complete their applications to finish the process before the March 31 deadline. The organization has received 21,317 applications but only enrolled 4,969 since going live Oct. 15.

"A lot of people, for whatever reason, haven’t completed the process," said Connector Executive Director Tom Ma­tsuda. "We’re primarily concerned about making sure that as many people as possible know about the March 31 deadline. For people who have not yet applied and for those who have applied and are in the system already, we’re really encouraging them, especially if they stopped midstream, to go back online."

The Connector has promised a significantly more user-friendly and functional system. Open enrollment started Oct. 15.

Nearly all U.S. taxpayers must have health insurance by March 31 to avoid tax penalties under Obama­care.

Roughly 79 percent of the 395 Hawaii Health Connector defects that had been reported from Oct. 15 through March 7 are now resolved, including those that were most impactful on consumers, said Anjali Kata­ria, a Washington, D.C.-based former senior technology adviser in the Obama administration who was brought in by the Connector Dec. 1 to help fix the system. There were 74 defects still unresolved as of this week, she said.

"When you think about an online product software system, there are going to be things like bugs and errors and timeouts that are caused by the system," she said. "These are things that are not working as we intended. It was very frustrating for individuals."

Some of the fixes include reducing the time to complete an online application to less than an hour from eight hours and shortening response times to one to 10 seconds from one to two minutes. The Connector said it also has eliminated problems that were preventing consumers from logging in and resetting passwords.

In addition, the failure rate in processing applications has dropped to 8 percent from between 30 and 50 percent in October, Kata­ria said.

"We are prioritizing which defects we address," Ma­tsuda said. "The ones that have more impact on the usability for consumers, we’re addressing those first so the ones remaining open are less serious."

The Connector’s main contractor, CGI Group Inc., which won a four-year contract to build the online marketplace, is "aggressively working to resolve 100 percent of the defects," Kata­ria said, adding that all issues are expected to be resolved by the end of the month. The Connector obligated $63.9 million for CGI to build, operate and maintain the system, according to its latest budget, dated Dec. 31.

"The Health Connector system is live and operational and serving the residents of Hawaii," Dave Delgado, CGI’s senior vice president, said in a statement. "Through ongoing system optimization, more than 90 percent of applicants using the website can successfully submit applications and enroll without assistance. We will continue to focus on delivering a positive user experience as part of our commitment to the success of the Hawaii Health Connector."

In January the Obama administration ended a contract for the federal health insurance exchange with Montreal-based CGI, one of the world’s largest information technology firms. In addition to Hawaii, CGI won prime vendor contracts with Colo­rado, Massachusetts and Vermont, which have blamed CGI for faulty systems.

CGI previously upset Hawaii lawmakers after it was paid $87.5 million between 1999 and 2011 to modernize the state Department of Taxation’s collection system, which officials say has never worked properly. The state is preparing to spend at least another $32 million to redo the project.