The Covered California CalHEERS online application and enrollment system is creating date of birth errors in the SubmittedApplicationPDF.pdf file. The month and the day are being switched. It is unknown if this is a simple reporting error or if the data is actually being submitted wrong to the carriers causing delays.
Date of Birth reporting errors
Covered California sends nothing to an online applicant when they apply online. There are no emails and the SubmittedApplicationPDF is only generated if the user selects the button at the bottom of the page. This button is easy to overlook and most people might be reticent to select it for fear crashing the program or causing delays.
Covered California switching date of birth month and day
As a matter of course, I have been trying to document the enrollment for my clients and that includes generating the SubmittedApplicationPDF and sending it to them for review. One client actually did review the file and noted that the date of birth was wrong. I immediately assumed I incorrectly keyed in the day and month. When I checked the Covered California online application and the information the client sent me against the SubmittedApplicationPDF report it was clear that the generated report from Covered California had switched the day and month. <whew!>
Will bad data cause insurance problems?
The big question centers on if the information in the generated summary is actually the information sent to the carriers. Like my client mentioned, hospitals and doctor offices always cross check birth dates with insurance membership cards. If your birth date is wrong that adds another layer of bureaucracy to try and fix the issue you didn’t create.
Covered California creates the 15th month
The images below are screen shots of the online application for a family of four I created. The data under Summary is the screen shot of the SubmittedApplicationPDF for the family. It is clear how the system is inverting the month and day of birth on the submitted application summary. Click the thumbnail to enlarge an image.
New birth dates make you younger or suspicious
Some of the inverted dates will work in a system and have no problems. For instance, the son of one client born on (mm/dd/yy) 04/06/1996 was transposed as 06/04/1996. Their son is still the same age, just a little younger, and the information transferred to another system would likely accept the digits. However, the father had his date of birth switched from 06/15/1959 to 15/06/1959. If the receiving system is set for 12 month maximum digit in the first field, the number 15 is going to cause problems.
Are bad DOB causing enrollment delays?
I’ve spoken with numerous people who applied months ago and the insurance carrier has no record of the application. There have been other issues with spouses and children being dropped from enrollment and Social Security numbers being switched between spouses. I don’t know if the date of birth issue is a contributing factor to the stalled applications or if there is a similar issue with the Social Security numbers.
Proof of Citizenship
It was odd that in this family of four, Covered California requested proof of citizenship of the eldest son, but not for the parents or youngest son. This son had his date of birth inverted from 10/26/1994 to 26/10/1994. It is unclear if the trigger for proof of citizenship is random or because of an application issue like the date of birth.
Did Covered California review the SubmittedApplicationPDF?
I doubt that Covered California will have the potentially minor bug fixed before December 23. Family’s who need health insurance starting January 1st; need to accept what ever bugs the Covered California systems has. The best scenario is that the date of birth error is simply the result of sloppy programming of a simple PDF report. The worst case scenario…Covered California will have lots of angry applicants if this inverted data is feeding into systems that can’t accept it and are causing delays.
