Thousands of Washington state residents who signed up for health insurance coverage for next year through Washington Healthplanfinder, the state’s health care exchange, have had their accounts mistakenly canceled.
According to Richard Onizuka, CEO for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, approximately 6,000 customer accounts were affected.
“Early analysis indicates that our system integrator, Deloitte, ran an automated enrollment cancellation process in error. The affected accounts, which are a portion of the total number of customers who are enrolled in coverage starting on Jan. 1, 2015, experienced an erroneous cancellation of both their enrollment and payment for 2015 coverage,” said Onizuka in a press release issued Tuesday night.
Impacted customers are being contacted by customer support representatives at the Exchange to reconfirm their 2015 coverage. Customers will also receive an additional communication from the Exchange via email or mail, depending on their communication preference, to ensure they are aware of the issue.
“We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to our customers and do not take this issue lightly,” said Onizuka.
On Monday, the Exchange Board approved a motion to conduct a full review of the code and architecture behind the Washington Healthplanfinder marketplace.
“We are committed to providing a better customer experience to Washington residents and are taking aggressive steps to ensure our IT vendors are delivering us a quality product and our customers are receiving an excellent online experience,” Onizuka said. “Again, we apologize for this error and will work with all affected customers to reinstate their coverage as quickly as possible.”
