Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, November 16, 2010,
Item 12
Number 12 is to approve modification number 1 to contract number 10 c 02230 j, sage brush solutions, for dependent eligibility audit services.
>> I just have one quick question.
I don't have a problem with the approval of this, per se, but it raised a little flag in the background information and I wanted to ask a question about.
as we are in the continuous improvement mode here and looking at i.t.
right now, I was just wondering when you made an estimate of the number of employees that had dependents on the system.
do we not know at one any one point in time how many dependents we have in the system?
>> yes, we do know how many dependents we have on any given time in the system.
what we saw with open enrollment was a dramatic increase in the number of dependents that we had listed on any given type of insurance that we had.
that could be as a result of the broadening of dependents as far as with health care reform.
we're not sure exactly where we saw that go up.
but we did see it go from about 2150 to about 2700 dependents.
so we need to expand the audit to cover the active votes.
>> so we've done the estimate before open enrollments have closed?
>> correct.
>> actually, before it even started we were working on this.
so we didn't really know what the real number would be.
>> I see.
just wanted to be sure if we needed to put something on the wish list that we knew what it was.
>> it's already there.
>> [overlapping speakers]
>> we didn't expect to see that huge increase.
and up to date we've had about 60, 62 people that have dropped dependent coverage.
>> as of last week we had about 62 people that voluntarily dropped dependents either because they weren't eligible or necessity didn't have the document -- they didn't have the documentation to provide.
and norma just gave me that it's 94 as of yesterday.
it's 94 as of yesterday.
>> 94 office.
>> 94 people have dropped dependent coverage as of yesterday because of this audit.
so that's really important.
it is good to do these every now and again because that is -- the dependent coverage is not only paid by the employees, it is subsidized by the county partially.
in addition we have to pay the claims on those people.
so it is good to do that.
so we definitely see a return on that.
>> the state of Texas is doing one as we speak as well.
>> what we were looking at before we were getting these persons and then getting this particular audit folks to actually examine the documents to -- of the employees to make sure that those dependents that are coming up under our health coverage actually are eligible to receive our health coverage.
>> absolutely.
>> so that's exactly what we end up doing by hiring these folks to basically get a true-up type situation.
>> correct.
and on a go-forward basis we'll be asking for these documents upon enrollment of new people.
so every five years or so, though, you do want to do an audit because people drop off, but they don't really drop off the coverage.
so we want to do these audits periodically.
not every year, but on a go-forward basis we'll be checking these documents when we enroll people.
>> thank you.
I move approval.
>> second.
>> any discussion on the motion?
>> Friday is the last day.
a little plug here.
please, employees, Friday is the last day.
>> last day for what?
>> last day to submit the documentation to sage brush.
>> will you send out one of those general e-mails as a reminder?
>> they've been dogging me because I just got mine in yesterday.
for those of you who are complaining about having to submit this documentation, I just want to say a lot of this came out of complaints from domestic partnership folks who were saying that they had to jump through hoops in order to prove up their eligibility.
we've just leveled the playing field.
I really appreciate that.
>> absolutely.
>> ms. Wilson, anything?
>> no.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank y'all very much.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 3:20 PM