Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, December 28, 2010,
Item 7
Number 7 is to consider and take appropriate action on the following: a, receive the dependent audit report conducted by sagebrush solutions; b, discontinue the prerequisite of a spouse residing with the employee to be eligible as a defendant and no longer require the use of a valid driver's license to document a spouse's residence in a marriage recognized by state law; and c, direct staff to implement one of the following options.
, there's two of them.
c 1, notify employees of a 10-day reconciliation period to meet all audit requirements to avoid their dependent's retroactive termination back to October 1, 2010.
remove any dependents for which documentation has not been supplied effective October 1, 2010.
claims paid after October 1, 2010, will be recovered by the fund and become the responsibility of the employee.
authorize hrmd to hire a 02 status temporary employee to conduct the reconciliation to complete the resolution of all outstanding cases; or 2, immediately terminate dependent's coverage for employees who did not complete or respond to audit instructions effective October 1, 2010.
claims paid after October 1, 2010, will be recovered by the fund and become the responsibility of the employee.
good morning.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
we're here who morning to discuss the results of the first dependent audit that we've had since we became self-funded in fiscal year 2001.
and the purpose of the audit was to make sure all dependents who are even sold in the health fund -- enrolled in the health fund are eligible based on the eligibility rules we established when we first became self-funded.
the results of the audit conducted by sagebrush solutions indicates that by and large our employees cooperated very well with the audit.
there obviously were some who did not complete the audit, some who did not begin or respond to the audit, but by and large we had good cooperation from our employees.
the results indicate there are 2711 employees who cover 758 dependents and of those there were 4716 dependents that were verified as eligible.
there were 519 dependents that were found with no documentation to support their eligibility.
there were 349 dependents who were not fully verified as eligible because the required verification documents weren't submitted.
and there were approximately 174 who were disenrolled because they were not -- they were found not to be eligible.
there were 182 dependents affected by employees who just simply did not respond to the audit request.
that's where the c motion that we propose come in.
>> so do the 182 know that they are on the distinction, the elimination list?
>> that is part of what we're asking the court in approving one of the motions that we're recommending that we notify the individuals that they have a reconciliation period of 10 days to meet the requirements of the audit verification process through either an email notification or other proper and accepted notifications that we tell them they have a 10-day period to provide the documentation that's needed or that their dependents will be terminated.
it will be a process communication for them to provide the documentation and then we would have a staff person, the individual we're asking would be hired as a temporary to work with those employees, make sure the documentation is what is required, and those that are eligible will receive information that their dependents are eligible and will stay on the plan.
those who are not eligible will be terminated.
>> to answer your question, sagebrush did send a communication after all this was done to all the employees, the 2711 employees.
some of us received it by email that the documentations -- the documentation had been received and it was okay.
some people were contacted by mail.
they should have received a notification.
what we're worried about is that there may be a group of employees out there that for whatever reason didn't know about the dependent audit.
and before we take people off of health insurance or any other type of insurance, that they may qualify for, we do want to have one more little period of time to make sure that it's actually appropriate to take them off, that the dependents aren't eligible for coverage.
when we take people off of -- if we disenroll people effective October 1st, it's like dominoes falling.
payroll will have to go back and issue refunds to these people for dependent coverage that has come out of their paycheck.
we will notify our vendor partners, our health care partners, our dental partners and they are going to start reversing claims on all these people.
when that happens, then they are going to recover the money from the health care partners.
the health care partners are going to start billing our employees for this.
before any of this happens, we would like to have one more 10-day period to really have a concentrated outreach just on these 183 employees to see if we can verify that they do not want coverage or don't qualify for coverage for their dependents.
if we did it without doing this and the court wanted to then reverse and say no, give them another chance, it's going to create a budge of work to undo the work that we did by disenrolling them.
so we're asking the court to either give us the go-ahead to disenroll these people effective October 1st or give us the go-ahead to employ that temporary person and just verify these 183 people and their 500 and some odd dependents don't need coverage and don't qualifier it.
>> just to be clear, these individuals were notified throughout the audit process that they had not met the verification requirements and they were notified continuously throughout the audit process, which ended November 19th.
>> so we believe that it is not sagebrush's responsibility to notify these 182?
>> no, sir.
they did notify them all throughout the process and through the end of -- right through the end of the audit period, which was November 19th.
it is not their responsibility past that date.
>> why do we come up with 10 days?
why not 15?
what I'm trying to do, what I'd like to see happen and this is a very serious matter.
and as we've got through the enrollment process, we normally get the word out and key persons normally come in and enroll during the enrollment part of the year.
and, you know, it's a tough effort, tough call, but during the process of the year we have been pretty successful in the numbers have steadily increased are the options of going to default in an insurance plan that you may not want if you do not enroll.
so those are some of the circumstances of not enrolling and stuff like.
that but my concern is notification and why 10 instead of 15.
why did we land on 10.
and then starting on what -- today's date is the 28th and we have a holiday coming up and stuff like that.
why 10 instead of 15?
>> we really need to wind this up as far as we're still taking deductions from employees for this coverage and this is going to be more of a refund due them.
also the longer we wait on this, the more potential charges that are incurred with our partners that are going to have to be reversed out and that's work on our partners.
we want to give two business weeks to get this taken care of, notify the people and get this in and get it completed.
>> when you recommend 10 days to capture what we haven't done in the past, these 182 folks, when was the beginning so you can get two business weeks, in other words days.
when were you expecting to actually come up under that for the 10-day period of time, starting when?
>> we were looking at January 10th.
>> January what?
>> January 10th.
>> mid January so we can get it completed by the end of the month.
>> okay, well, let me ask you this and I'm going to be quiet, but some of these -- some of the inquiry and investigation done by -- some of these things that have relayed out show that persons may not have access to email, other things.
we have some employees that don't even deal with this kind of access.
my question to you, is there other than mail -- I mean mail is one thing that goes out, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't as far as the physical mail that comes to your address.
my concern is have you thought of any other way to do this to make sure that whatever mechanism that we have in place to communicate with these folks, how will you do that on this go arched to make sure that they get the information?
what are you recommending?
>> sir, one of the reasons why we want to get a temporary for a couple of weeks is so that we can actually call the employees at work or call them at home.
we can work that a little further than just email or mail and get their attention.
if need be, we can contact the h.r.
liaison in the department they work.
we would rather not do that because this is kind of personal information so we would rather not do that if we can contact the employee directly.
that's our intention is to personally try to contact every one of these employees.
>> what I'm concerned about, though, I'm afraid you may not get 100% of the persons that we're trying to capture here.
and if that is the -- if that actually happens, then, of course, the remedies that persons have to go through having to divorce themselves from, you know, the coverage, you know, they won't be covered, have to end up paying bills and stuff like that from outstanding balances of things that the insurance covered where it won't cover going -- back dating to an early date.
my concern is that I'm afraid that the 100 and some odd folks, 82 folks that we're talking about will not have an opportunity to participate 100%.
and that's what I'm concerned about.
I would like to make sure that all of them got in on this, but however there may be circumstances or conditions whereby some of these will not be contacted.
and that's my -- I'm looking for a safeguard, a perfect scenario where we can actually capture these folks.
>> Commissioner, if it came down to not having an email address, a good physical address where we couldn't find the person in the department, then we would have to do a face to face.
and if we failed at that point, there would be something wrong with having that person on payroll because that's where we would draw the information on how to contact that person.
>> normally during the open season -- I'm going to shut up.
>> don't keep promising that, Commissioner.
>> during open enrollment, you email us to tell us when open enrollment was occurring, but you also email the manager or the head of that department and kind of -- you know, I kind of pass things along.
if you email me, I can tell everybody on staff we've got open enrollment coming up, those folks under me.
is that going to be done in this particular case whereby the questions -- they belong to somebody in the county.
some department head or something.
so is that part of what you are going to end up probably doing is doing something like that?
>> if we have a select few, that wouldn't be my first route of contact, I would try to contact them directly because there may be a legitimate reason and I couldn't want that employee's boss to think they were trying to get away with something on insurance.
I would like to contact that employee directly.
if we can't contact that employee, then sure, we're going to contact the boss and say hey, can you get the boss to contact us, it's urgent, we need to talk to them.
I'm fine with coming back with a report after this 10-day period and say we've got 10 people or 100 people.
we know some people on this list actually intend for us to disenroll their dependents, they just didn't contact us.
we've had a couple of calls from people saying hey, when are you going to do this, they are still taking the money out of my check.
there are some people waiting for this to happen, they just didn't contact us and say disenroll my dependents, they just let it ride.
we know some people really intend for us to disenroll their dependents but we intend to contact people.
>> what would be the source of funding for the temporary employee?
>> the health fund.
>> okay.
and why wouldn't a drop-dead date be better than the 10-day period?
because if you are on vacation and you don't get your 10 days or you come back in two weeks, wouldn't you claim my 10 days start -- my 10-day period starts upon my return to work?
why wouldn't we just say January 15th, 5:00 p.m.
that's the second Friday of January, right?
>> could we push that back to the 22nd because we want a chance to contact and get people out.
would that be okay?
>> that's fine with me, but that's a whole lot longer than 10 days.
I just think a drop-dead date is better than 10 days.
>> that would be 12 days if we did the 10th through the 22nd, it would be 12 days.
>> well, if we set a date, it would start for those watching this --
>> it can start the 12th through the 22nd.
>> so January 22, 5:00 p.m.
is better than 15?
>> that's fine.
whatever the court directs.
>> it's the 21st sir.
>> the 21st?
>> I would set a --
>> [multiple voices]
>> January 21st.
>> take a few days for the communication to be developed and then to disseminate.
so the drop-dead date of the 21st.
>> and b of question number 2, we heard a lot of numbers.
but we really are concerned about the 182 who may be disenrolled unless positive steps are taken to document their dependents.
>> correct.
>> is what we hear.
okay.
any more discussion?
>> is that your on the drop dead January 21?
>> that's my motion and thrors authorize the 02 temporary employee to assist and ask our h.r.
liaison to do the appropriate documentation.
that way we'll be sure to hit those not documented as required.
how is that?
>> I just had one more question about the hiring of the temporary.
I mean do we not have stuff with flexibility in their schedule and job descriptions to do this?
why do we have to hire a temporary?
>> one of the reasons we want to make sure we have somebody that can actively contact the people and also we want to be -- we're looking at being more than one location to receive those documents.
so we're trying to make sure that we're using staff efficiently.
we can in our main location, but we would like to have them in other locations too.
we have some in del valle.
>> some of our staff will be augmenting this but we would like to have a temporary so we can be -- it's time intensive.
this is very time intensive with documents and so forth.
>> are we expecting what to be done in the month of January?
>> correct.
>> so at the end of January the need for this employee, if it hasn't gone away, it's close to it.
>> correct.
and also our staff will be working on the 239 employees we've received some documentation to make sure we get the documentation completed on those also.
>> judge?
>> Commissioner Davis.
>> judge, before that January 21st date which is deadline and folks need to understand this, is there a possibility we can receive information maybe a week before that date to see exactly where they are as far as the status and progress of what we're recommending, at least a week out?
>> Commissioner Davis wants a status report a week before the deadline.
>> we can do that.
>> to see contactly where we are.
>> our people tend to wait until the last minute.
that's just when we get things done, but we're happy to do that or we could give you a report the Tuesday after if you would like and see where we're at before we take any action.
either one or both.
>> yes, sir, we can do that is what I'm hearing.
>> all right.
thank you.
>> any more discussion on the motion?
>> and the motion is?
>> the motion is to set January 22 at 5:00 p.m.
as the deadline, authorize hiring of a temporary employee to assist with this initiative.
as described by the hrmd director.
>> I have just -- I just wanted to comment, the backup was excellent.
this exercise has been interesting to me and it does point up that we are going to see at least $61,000 savings from having done this audit.
and it could be as much as half a million dollars annually from having done this audit.
this was important to do and I think that there were some additional dividends from having done it.
I think we're finding our ability to communicate with our employees, the pattern of communication with our employees, the pattern of response by our employees to request for action.
I think that there's a lot of benefit from having done this to our workforce as well to our fiscal bottom line.
>> thank you.
we did learn a great deal from this exercise and cindy is doing her r&r.
that's why he's not here.
>> yeah, works like a beaver always, but in this instance I'm sure she's -- her vacation is even more deserved than it usually is.
>> any more discussion?
>> judge, would that be a direction as far as the report a week before.
>> that's friendly.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
show Commissioners Davis, Eckhardt and yours truly voting in favor.
Commissioner Huber voting against.
move approval of b.
>> second.
>> I see what b says.
that's exactly what we wanted to do.
>> correct, it's actually not part of our group policy that you have to -- if you are legally married that you have to live in the same household.
if you are any other adult that's not legally married you have to live in the same household.
these people should not have to present a driver's license to prove where they live.
it's not necessary.
>> I applaud you for ferreting that out and removing that document requirement.
I really appreciate that and appreciate also the
>> [indiscernible] and treatment of employees across the board where they are legally married, whether they are cohabitants, whether they are a same-sex couple, whether the child is adopted or the child of your spouse or significant other.
it's really wonderful work from a policy perspective as well and from a procedural perspective.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
is that all you need from us today?
>> yes.
>> thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, December 28, 2010 5:12 PM
