Fixing insurance data errors on HealthCare.gov top priority for CMS

Fixing errors related to messages using a key electronic data interchange standard is at the top of a “punch list” of problems that the CMS continues to work out with HealthCare.gov, Obama administration officials said Friday.

Transmissions between the troubled federal exchange and health plans in the Accredited Standards Committee X12 834 standard for health plan enrollment are critical because they inform insurers which people chose their plans, delineate any payment splits between the enrollee and federal subsidy payments under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and contain sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers.

Payers have noted that 834 data have been coming in incorrect.

“Among the fixes taking place last night, we made sure (834s) were a top priority and that work will continue,” said Julie Bataille, the CMS communications director.

Ensuring accurate 834s is also important as it will help the agency come up with an accurate count of how many people have received information from the exchanges. The CMS hopes to release those figures by sometime in mid-November, Bataille said.

Other priorities include reducing software glitches, decreasing outage durations and making sure the site is secure.

There has been some progress made on the punch list, the officials said. During the first few weeks, people waited an average of eight seconds for each page to load. As of last Thursday, they were waiting less than one second, said Jeffrey Zients, a businessman the White House recently brought in to serve as czar for the project of repairing the HealthCare.gov shopping and enrollment portal.