The state health insurance exchange is wrapping up interviews and background checks this week in its six-month hunt for a new chief executive officer.
Connect for Health Colorado officials expect to select a finalist or finalists for the job next week.
The exchange is also looking for chief financial and operating officers as well as a full-time internal auditor to work with external state, federal and independent auditors.
The exchange is currently undergoing five audits or reviews, said interim chief executive Gary Drews, who stepped in after the first CEO, Patty Fontneau, left in July to take an executive position with Cigna.
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“We’re not going to get out of any holes with the levels of staffing that we have,” Drews said at an exchange board meeting on Monday. “We are up against the wall all the time.”
Drews said one of the top systemic issues facing the exchange, with under a week left in 2015 open enrollment, is being chronically understaffed with only 45 full-time staff members.
“There’s a difference between being lean and being emaciated,” said board member Steve ErkenBrack, chief executive of Grand Junction-based Rocky Mountain Health Plans.
The insurance industry is heavily audited and the exchange, which is processing millions of dollars through its organization, will get audited and should have staff to accommodate the audit schedule, ErkenBrack said.
A bill is working its way through the legislature with bipartisan support to expand the state auditor’s office authority to conduct comprehensive performance audits of the exchange, after its recent limited review uncovered a long list of shortcomings in policies and procedures.
Exchange officials are expecting a big bump in enrollment activity this week as open enrollment for 2015 coverage comes to an end Sunday. So far, the exchange has had 132,000 applications submitted for private health insurance.
“It’s a huge success, and it’s very important to celebrate that,” Drews said. “We also have 1 to 2 percent of our customers with enrollment issues.”
An estimated 1,300 people are currently stuck in the system without coverage confirmation because of design and technical glitches with online enrollment.
Another problem that recently erupted for the exchange was a question of whether more than 3,600 policy holders who were eligible for automatic renewal of their health plans were inadvertently terminated by simply browsing other plans online.
Exchange staff has completed its outreach, they said, and 1,228 cases are still pending because consumers were contacted but not reached. An additional 1,268 insured have confirmed they left the exchange to seek coverage elsewhere. The rest have either completed enrollment, in 364 cases, or their enrollment is in progress.
Date: February 9, 2015