Workers at the state's Medicaid eligibility clearinghouse shown at the sorting tables where mailed and paper application forms are processed and then scanned for entry to the state's computerized enrollment and eligibility system. The front end of the new KEES system is already being used for some sign-ups, foregoing the need for the paper shuffling. by KHI News Service

After months of trying to dance around the politically charged issue, the administration of Gov. Sam Brownback has openly acknowledged that the $139 million Medicaid enrollment system that it is building will be interconnected with the online health insurance exchange required by the Affordable Care Act, and that the system will be ready to go by the Oct. 1 federal deadline.

“It's just a connectivity kind of a thing,” said Dr. Robert Moser, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which is spearheading the project to overhaul the 26-year-old, paper-based system to a modern online one.

“I certainly appreciate the concerns that are tied to the political angst, but this program was well on its way when I came on board and my job is to make sure it gets completed successfully,” he said.

Entangled with the exchange

Overhauling the state’s antiquated Medicaid enrollment system has been in the works since at least 2009, when the project was called K-MED.

The project stalled briefly in August 2011, when Brownback returned a $31.5 million federal grant, most of which had been earmarked for developing the state’s new Medicaid enrollment system. Brownback said he was returning the grant because it was tied to the Affordable Care Act — which he he had pledged he would not implement prior to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the law, and later until after the 2012 federal elections.

Then that same month, administration officials announced a new contract with Accenture to develop the Kansas Eligibility and Enforcement System (KEES), using $118 million in federal funds to pay for the $139 million projected cost. K-MED became KEES.

A key condition of the federal funding was that the KEES system would have to be “interoperable” with the coming health insurance exchange — an online marketplace scheduled to launch Oct. 1 where consumers can compare and buy coverage that will begin Jan. 1, 2014.

In Kansas and the 25 other states that elected not to run their own health insurance exchanges, the federal government will build and operate them.

Political sensitivity

Moser said interoperability of KEES and the exchange means that — for consumers — there will be a single entry point for enrolling in private health insurance or in Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for low-income, elderly and disabled persons. Medicaid in Kansas is known as KanCare.

“You enter in some information, most of it is going to be yes/no. If you're eligible for Medicaid then it would pop up the KEES patient portal,” Moser said. “If it shows that your income level is such that you don't qualify for Medicaid…it's going to push your information over to the federal exchange. So those two systems literally will be handing back and forth inquiries.”

Moser said the fact KEES would interface with the insurance exchange was no different than integration with other federal computer systems, such as Homeland Security or the Internal Revenue Service.

“It doesn't really have that significant of an implication in my mind. But then again, I'm a physician and a little bit more patient-centered and look at the convenience factor. If that person is in a hospital setting and I think they need admitted, but they're worried about the cost because they don't have coverage, I'd like to be able to determine at that point in time 'Are they eligible for coverage' and use that as leverage to get them in to the hospital,” Moser said.

→ Continue reading this story on khi.org

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