Software snafu affects government employees’ health benefits

The state agency that administers health insurance benefits for thousands of state and county workers in Hawaii is experiencing problems with the rollout of new benefits administration software, or BAS.

Derek M. Mizuno, administrator of the Hawaii Employer-Union Health Benefits Trust Fund, or EUTF, sent a memo dated June 27 to state and county employees who get EUTF health benefits saying the trust fund has a large backlog of employment forms they've been unable to process between April 6 and May 5.

The memo said those forms were filed by beneficiaries because of "recurring events," such has new hires, terminations and retirements; "qualifying events" such as births, marriages and divorces; and open enrollment, a period in which beneficiaries can make changes to their insurance coverage.

"As expected, we have also encountered issues with the implementation that we are resolving with the BAS software vendor," the memo stated. "This has resulted in significant delays in processing enrollment forms and call wait times. I am truly sorry for these delays. The EUTF staff are working tirelessly to catch up. Thank you for your patience during this time."

The memo said the trust fund's staff "are currently focused on processing open enrollment changes" to ensure those changes were received by the health, dental, drug and vision insurance carriers during the first week of July so they would be reflected in July 15 paychecks for county employees and July 20 paychecks for state employees.

According to the memo, EUTF staff also were focusing on the recurring and qualifying events during the first two weeks of this month.

"This is affecting hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. They don't know what's happening. And if you try to call (EUTF), they will not respond," a state employee who spoke under the condition of anonymity told the Tribune-Herald.

The memo said the new software was dropping domestic partners of employees from medical, drug, dental and vision coverages. In addition, some Hawaii State Teachers Association members "have been experiencing dependents being dropped from vision coverage."

The state employee who spoke to the Tribune-Herald said his health insurance premium wasn't deducted from his June 5 paycheck.

"So, what is happening is people are paying for it out-of-pocket. And there's no guarantee they're going to get reimbursed," the employee said. "And what if this goes on for awhile, and they say, ‘Oh, now you owe two months of insurance?' The poor workers - their paychecks are going to be depleted."

The employee said he canceled a medical appointment because "I didn't know what the effect was."

"And I'm sure other people did, too," he added.

The memo said EUTF is working with the software vendor to resolve the issue.

"We will send out another memo when this issue has been resolved and your dependent's coverage has been reinstated. The memo will address premium under or over collections."

Mizuno declined to speak to the Tribune-Herald on Tuesday morning and requested any questions be emailed to him, which the newspaper did. Those questions weren't responded to in time for this story.

Email John Burnett at [email protected].