Summer 2013

Q: What is health care reform?

A: The term “health care reform” refers to the Affordable Care Act—the federal law that was passed in March 2010—as well as any state laws passed to put it in place. These laws are intended to help more people get affordable health care coverage and receive better medical care.

Q: What are the Health Insurance Marketplaces?

A: Marketplaces, sometimes called “Exchanges,” will be state- or federal- run online markets where many people can buy health care coverage. It will be available to people who are uninsured or who buy insurance on their own. They will be able to compare and choose health plans offered by private companies, get answers to questions, and find out if they are eligible for financial assistance or special programs. The marketplaces will also operate a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) where small employers can purchase coverage for their employees. Coverage purchased there will be effective Jan. 1, 2014, or later.

Q: Does a person have to buy from the marketplaces?

A: No, not necessarily. The marketplace is just one of the ways people can shop for health coverage. People can still get coverage through their employer or directly from an insurance company. A member will have to buy coverage through the Marketplace to apply for subsidized coverage, however.

Q: Will Kaiser Permanente coverage be available through the marketplaces?

A: Kaiser Permanente intends for our plans to be available in the marketplaces, but individuals don’t have to buy from the marketplaces. A person can still buy directly from Kaiser Permanente or continue to get coverage through his or her employer.

Q: Can anyone get health care coverage?

A: Yes, the ACA requirement regarding guaranteed availability applies to all individuals. Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage because a person has a medical condition, and no one has to pass a medical exam to qualify for coverage.

Q: Who has to buy health insurance?

A: The Affordable Care Act requires most U.S. citizens and those lawfully present to have a basic level of health coverage starting Jan. 1, 2014. There will be some exceptions for financial hardship, religious objection, immigration status and certain other circumstances.

Q: What if a person can’t afford to buy health care coverage?

A: The federal government may provide financial assistance to help a person pay for health coverage if he or she can’t afford it. This is usually determined by a person’s income level and family size. Individuals will be able to find out if they qualify for financial assistance when the Health Insurance Marketplaces launch in October.

Q: What can frontline workers do to prepare for health care reform?

A: Take advantage of every opportunity to become informed. Attend trainings (on KP Learn or in person), read communications and ask questions. Visit kp.org/reform, and refer friends, family and members to the site, too.

With changes this fall promising to bring more health care coverage to millions of Americans—and many more members to Kaiser Permanente—unit-based teams are helping to get member services in top shape.

Managing diseases, slashing wait times and cutting out the high cost of waste are naturally on the radar for caregivers’ UBTs. But operations teams also are working behind the scenes to make sure our services are seamless.

For instance, one team at the California Service Center in San Diego is working to make sure new members have a good “onboarding” experience. Its project aims to make sure that what an employer purchases for its employees is what those workers get when they show up at a medical center for the first time, ID cards in hand. No one wants a new member arriving at a Kaiser Permanente facility and being asked to fork out an unexpected copayment or, worse, being denied a service outright.

“This is the kind of solution that is—and should be—generated from the front line,” says Demetria Williams, a service center manager and the Contract team’s management co-lead.

KP's dual role

Kaiser Permanente is unusual in that we provide both insurance coverage and health care, and so how administrative services are handled affect a member’s overall impression of the organization. The Contracts team enrolls employer groups, entering the details of the lengthy contracts—copay amounts, covered medicines, vision care allowances and so on—that will apply to every employee covered by that particular contract. That sets the stage for the individual employee’s enrollment with Kaiser Permanente. If it’s all done correctly, everything goes smoothly when the new member arrives at one of our facilities.

The job is tough. About 18 account administration representatives refer to the signed contracts they’ve received from Sales and Account managers as they enroll a new employer group—or update an existing one—so the employees will get the right services. The account administration representatives contact the sales people when they find inconsistencies—when, say, the plan that was selected doesn’t include vision coverage, even though the associated contract calls for it.

“We would pick up the phone, but we were not connecting,” Williams says. “We were speaking different languages. We didn’t know what they wanted; they didn’t see what we saw.”

Despite the meticulous work, the team faced a 65 percent discrepancy rate—entries that are likely to cause problems for members when they seek care. So the Contracts UBT used the plan, do, study, act steps to track where the data was misaligned and trace it to specific parts of the process—and team members decided on a small test of change, hosting a “Day in the Life of a Contract” with members of the Sales and Marketing team.

Part of the difficulty was that sales managers and service reps work on different computer systems, with no connection between them. The competing systems were a swamp of alphabet stew: CIDARS, LOB, PA. Since merging the two systems into one isn’t in the offing, staff members found a solution at the unit-based team level.

Cutting through jargon

During two days of face-to-face meetings, the two sides cut through the sea of baffling acronyms and buzzwords and created a cheat sheet of common, acceptable codes.

Jeannie Athey, the Contract team’s union co-lead, an account administration representative for nine years and an OPEIU Local 30 member, said the UBT project was like a foreign student exchange. “We hadn’t seen their system before,” she says—and it was eye opening.

It’s too soon to have updated metrics, but Athey says anecdotal reports indicate the reps need fewer phone consults with sales managers and there has been less frustration between the two groups.

“Members can’t be enrolled until we’ve done our job of setting up the group contract,” says Sherri Saunders, the service center’s operations manager and the team’s sponsor. “If they’re not enrolled, they can’t get services. The contracts are legal documents. We have to get them right the first time, for our members.”

Two people—one, a white woman, the other, a black man from the West Indies—witnessed the crucible of new workers who arrived by the tens of thousands at the Kaiser shipyards during World War II. Together, they laid the foundation for an extraordinary photographic record of the organization’s history.

Ann Rosener was a San Francisco Bay Area local whose assignment with the Office of War Information included writing and photography. Emmanuel Francis Joseph was born on the island of Saint Lucia. He settled in Oakland in 1924 and became the first professional black photographer in the Bay Area. Both artists brought a keen eye to the history unfolding before them and chronicled the often-overlooked working lives of women and people of color.