OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Mike Fogarty, CEO of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OKHCA) says, with a new electronic application system in place, Oklahoma is ready for the onslaught of Medicaid enrollment that is expected in 2014.
The Affordable Care Act is expected to provide health insurance coverage to some 32 million uninsured people over the next 10 years, many of them to be covered by Medicaid. With that in mind, Oklahoma officials are making sure the state is prepared.
The state is using a system designed by HP that enables Oklahomans to apply online for the state’s SoonerCare Medicaid program and receive a decision immediately, Fogarty said. The system being used is unique, he said.
[See also: Oklahoma, HP sign $281M Medicaid IT deal.]
Fogarty said the new online enrollment system, installed in September 2010 and managed by OKHCA, replaced a cumbersome and time-consuming paper-based process. Since its implementation, the system has processed just under 385,000 applications, reducing the application processing time from days to minutes.
“We’re very excited about it,” Fogarty said. “We’re finding ourselves bringing other states up to date on this project. It really has the potential to handle a much higher degree of volume.”
Fogarty said Oklahoma began working on a vision to expand its Medicaid benefits years ago. “We actually had the idea well before any of us knew ACA was on the horizon,” he said.
The state worked to expand its Medicaid enrollment through a $6 million federal transformation grant in 2007. “We spent three years planning and building the system,” he said. “If we hadn’t started working on it before ACA, it wouldn’t be up and running now. It’s an enormous project.”
The number of Medicaid enrollees has been growing in Oklahoma “by design” for a number of years, according to Fogarty. Fourteen years ago, 30 percent of Oklahoma’s children were uninsured. “This was unthinkable,” Fogarty said, so Oklahoma raised the income level for qualifying beneficiaries. Now the number of uninsured children in Oklahoma is at 10 percent.
[See also: Oklahoma system begins revamp.]
Fogarty said the SoonerCare enrollment system is unique because it completes the process of enrolling Medicaid beneficiaries by enrolling the entire family. The online enrollment provides the family with instant coverage if they qualify, he said.
According to Fogarty, a number of states have converted from paper Medicaid applications to electronic applications, but when the information is transferred, it’s sent to a person at the other end, only to go through the same process as if it were paper.
SoonerCare’s system processes 40,000 enrollment and renewals a month to qualify 60,000 families. “It’s an amazing system and it’s gotten rave reviews,” he said.
Of those 40,000 transactions, Fogarty said, 45 percent occur on computers in homes or public libraries. The other half, 55 percent, comes through agencies.
Fogarty said before Sept. 2010, all of SoonerCare applications were paper. Today 10 percent are paper applications. “It shocks me,” he said.
