Hospitals and Health Insurance: 10 Best Practices from the 2013/14 Enrollment Period

In our work with hospitals to help them enroll the uninsured during the recent open enrollment period, we identified 10 best practices:

  1. Executive Leadership: CEOs believed that enrolling their uninsured patients was important and gave their public support.
  2. Steering Committee: Leadership across the system (e.g., community, finance, legal, marketing, and operations) was represented to ensure an organized effort.
  3. Expert Assistance: Hospitals became a CMS Certified Application Counselor Organization (CACO) and hired and trained enrollment counselors.
  4. Targeted Efforts: Finance departments identified uninsured patients who would benefit from personal assistance.
  5. Local Outreach: Community-based departments coordinated with local partners (e.g., health centers, non-profits and religious organizations).
  6. Healthcare.gov (or state marketplaces): Marketing departments took advantage of freebies on the sites to produce multi-lingual handouts.
  7. Promotional Activities: Marketing also used social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) to educate the community, announce events and share success stories.
  8. E-Learning: The CACs created an enrollment module on the e-learning system and asked employees to become informed resources.
  9. Digital Media: Videos played in waiting areas and at enrollment events to educate the uninsured about the “who, what, why, how, and when” of enrollment.
  10. Enrollment Results: Steering committees monitored activity, analyzed data and presented results to management, including recommendations for 2015.

Hospitals may or may not have been satisfied with their efforts given the early website issues and the difficulty in confirming enrollment. But, today, many of their formally uninsured patients are now newly insured.

Open enrollment begins again on November 15, 2014 for the 2015 plan year.