The Hawaii Health Connector is preparing to name its third executive director in a year.
The Connector’s board of directors is on track to make a decision on a new head for the troubled organization in early October, Tom Matsuda, interim executive director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. He initially told lawmakers a successor would be chosen by Wednesday.
"The board is actively engaged in the process of searching for a new executive director and has narrowed the field to two candidates," Matsuda said last week in an email. "We feel confident in both candidates’ ability to lead the Connector going forward for the long term and are in active conversations to determine the best fit for the organization."
The exchange, created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has struggled with participation over the past year, attracting just two medical insurers — Hawaii Medical Service Association and Kaiser Permanente Hawaii — and signing up just 10,750 individuals, the lowest in the nation.
Connector officials have attributed poor enrollment in part to the state’s low uninsured rate, previously estimated at about 100,000 residents, making it difficult to boost sign-ups.
Enrollment got off to a slow start last year.
CGI Group Inc., which won contracts worth $73 million to build and operate the exchange, failed to meet its original Oct. 1 launch date and built a system that has been plagued with software glitches.
As the start of the second enrollment period approaches on Nov. 15, the Connector, designed to match qualified residents and small businesses with subsidized coverage, may have an even bigger hurdle to overcome.
In August the state’s dominant health plan, HMSA, pulled out of the exchange for small businesses and urged officials to abolish that portion of the Connector.
When asked whether there will be any other health insurers besides Kaiser offering plans for small businesses, Matsuda reiterated that the Connector is working with the state Insurance Division and federal partners to identify and support small-group insurers that might want to sell their plans via the exchange.
"The Connector is here to provide a place for individuals and small businesses to find affordable, quality coverage," Matsuda said. "Some years, there will be more competition than others. HMSA is still participating by offering individual plans, and we are working with Kaiser and the dental insurers to ensure individuals and small businesses continue to be able to find affordable insurance plans."
Meanwhile the Connector put out a bid for a new vendor to replace embattled contractor CGI. Matsuda declined to comment on the new contractor, but UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation’s largest medical insurer, which fixed the federal Obamacare exchange, said in documents obtained by the Star-Advertiser that it won the bid to replace CGI as the main IT vendor for the faulty Hawaii exchange.
When asked whether the exchange would be seeking any refunds from CGI, Matsuda said, "We are currently evaluating the most effective options to address the changes that need to be made to the system, and beyond that we do not have additional information to provide at this time."
What he would say is that many defects in the system have been resolved, and the online marketplace, which often took hours for customers to navigate over the past year, is now more user-friendly.
For instance, the system took on average one to two minutes to refresh pages last October but now takes four to eight seconds. Response times have also been narrowed from one to three minutes last October to less than a second today, Matsuda said.
"Continuing improvements to the system are making the Connector website much more effective and user-friendly for consumers," he said. "Both of these rates are well within the industry norms, offering a much improved customer experience."
