EDITSXpress: New E-tool For NY Health Plans, Speeds Enrollments Into Public Health Insurance

Oct. 20, 2009 - PRLog -- (Tarrytown, NY)…. The Hudson Center for Health Equity & Quality (Hcheq) has introduced EDITSXpress, a software solution that dramatically cuts the time it takes New York City health insurers to enroll the uninsured in New York State-subsidized programs, while cutting costs and preserving the way a health plan does business, announced Georganne Chapin, President & CEO of Hcheq.

“EDITSXpress eliminates paper, allowing health plans to submit Medicaid and Family Health Plus applications daily and electronically into the New York City Human Resource Administration’s Eligibility Data and Image Transfer System, known as EDITS,” Ms. Chapin explains. “This is a tremendous improvement over the existing system, which is an outdated, cumbersome and time-consuming paper system.”

With the new tool, health plans and community based organizations that are designated facilitated enrollers can create, submit and track all EDITS transactions at will. EDITSXpress cuts the enrollment process by two months, which means that health insurance providers can get new members enrolled faster. Currently, health plans have one option for getting their applications to HRA: hand-delivered — crates filled with hundreds of applications in bundles of ten — once a week at a specified time. If even one application in the bundle of ten is missing information, all ten applications in that batch are returned, often delaying applications for weeks.

“The beauty of EDITSXpress is that health plans and other organizations submitting applications to HRA can keep their existing workflows and processes,” says Sherri Ehrlich, Director of Business Development & Account Management at Hcheq. “Organizations that rely on paper applications can still use them in the field, but at the office, those paper applications and supporting documents are scanned into EDITSXpress and transmitted electronically to EDITS. This is a huge time-saver that will benefit plans and enrollees, saving money, and getting folks enrolled in public health insurance sooner — it’s a win-win.”

For more information on EDITSXpress, contact Ms. Ehrlich at 914-372-2101, or sherri.ehrlich@hcheq.org.

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The Hudson Center for Health Equity & Quality is an independent not-for-profit organization that promotes the delivery of humane, high quality, cost-effective health care through policy study, advocacy, and the development of information technology. For more information, visit www.hcheq.org.