Vendors Vow HIX Will Be Ready on Time

Despite some lawmakers' concerns, technology contractors say health insurance exchanges will be up and running by October 1, as mandated by law.

Four vendors entrusted with getting the health insurance exchanges up and running told a House subcommittee on Tuesday that despite concerns heard in healthcare information technology circles and within the federal government, the exchanges will be ready to roll by Oct. 1.

The exchanges are the online marketplaces that will be used by individuals to select and purchase health insurance, as mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The preparedness of this critical component of the healthcare law has been widely debated among stakeholders, pundits, and politicians.

Earlier this summer the Government Accountability Office released two reports that raised concerns about HIX meeting the Oct. 1 deadline. While "much progress has been made…much remains to be accomplished within a relatively short amount of time," warned the reports.

See Also: GAO: HIX Unready by October?

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee's subcommittee on health, which called the hearing, clicked through the exchange functions that must be completed for each insurance application, including checks with the IRS to verify income and the Department of Homeland Security to verify residency.

"I've just gone through 20 steps…I'm a little skeptical that this system will function as advertised," Pitts said.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), ranking member of the subcommittee, cautioned that although "hiccups and unanticipated issues will occur along the way, we need to put them in perspective."

Representatives from CGI Federal Inc., Equifax Work Solutions, Serco Inc., and Quality Software Services Inc., firms with decades of experience in government contracting among them, addressed a wide range of committee concerns, including the readiness of the data services hub, IT applications, paper applications, income and employment verification, and project modifications.

The contractors also assured the subcommittee members that they are well-versed in protecting personal information and have safeguards in place to protect the privacy of personal data.

Data Services Hub
The data hub, a networked system for verifying consumers' Social Security numbers, immigration status and other information when they log on to health insurance exchanges had been delayed, and beset by security concerns. But federal officials announced Tuesday that the hub has been security tested and will be operational by September 30.

The hub will be owned and operated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It will be housed in a CMS secure cloud hosted at a data center.

Michael Finkel, executive vice president for program delivery at QSSI, which is charged with writing the software code for the federal government's data services hub, said QSSI, too, is meeting its delivery milestones on time.

Software coding is complete, performance and integration testing is underway, and the hub is connected to the system that will transfer data to and from health plans. It is also connected to the databases at the federal agencies tasked with verifying information.

Online applications
CGI Federal has a 29-month contract to design, develop and implement the HIX. Cheryl Campbell, a senior vice president at the firm, is "confident" that CGI's part of the job will be ready by Oct.1. She noted that all the key milestones have been achieved, including an operational readiness review this month.

Paper Applications
John Lau, the program director for Serco Inc. contract, said his company is "on schedule" to deliver all of the requirements of its CMS contract to process and verify paper applications. Serco was contracted in July 2013.

Income and Employment Verification
Equifax Workforce Solutions has a five-year contract to provide realtime income and employment verification services to the data services hub. Lynn Spellecy, corporate counsel, said the company has provided this type of service to government agencies for almost 20 years. The services will be similar to the eligibility reviews it provides in 30 states for the Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance programs.

Spellecy said the Equifax system is integrated with the data services hub and end-to-end testing has been performed with the hub and the state exchanges. Volume testing to simulate activity at peak periods has been successfully completed. Data flow tests are scheduled for next week.