About Health-e-App
Benefits of Health-e-App
Health-e-App streamlines the Healthy Families/Medi-Cal for Children application process for applicants, Enrollment Entities (EEs), Certified Application Assistants (CAA), counties, and program administrators. By submitting applications electronically over the Internet, rather than by paper through the mail, Health-e-App simplifies the application process and establishes a complete data entry process for application information.
Health-e-App is an easy-to-use, interactive application process that replaces the paper process and increases the completeness of the application information. Healthy Families applicants can select providers and health, vision, and dental plans from automatically provided online lists. The Health-e-App process expedites the application process by gathering and submitting applicant information online.
Using an Internet browser, CAAs can help applicants simultaneously apply for children for Healthy Families and children and pregnant women for Medi-Cal. The online application process takes 20-30 minutes to complete and offers the following enhanced features:
- Disposition tracking for each application
- Preliminary eligibility screening in just seconds
- Instantaneous error checking to improve quality of application information
- Online selection of health care providers and health, dental, and vision plans (for Healthy Families applicants)
- Electronic payment of Healthy Families initial monthly premium
- Automated computing of income and deductions
- Electronic signatures
- Web-based interactive training for Certified Application Assistants (CAAs)
- ADA-compliant English and Spanish versions
In addition to these enhancements, Health-e-App also provides more streamlined, improved application processing:
- Shorter application processing time
- Decreased amount of paper used in process
- Reduced manual processing for the County eligibility staff
- Increased communication between CAAs and County eligibility staff
History of Health-e-App
Health-e-App is one of the nation’s first efforts to use the Internet to enroll low-income children and expectant mothers in the state’s public health insurance programs. Its development was supported by a partnership between the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHSA), the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), the Medi-Cal Policy Institute, and San Diego County.
The CHCF and the Medi-Cal Policy Institute were partners with CHHSA and its administering departments, the State Department of Health Services (DHS), and the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB) in developing Health-e-App. Deloitte Consulting designed and built the Health-e-App; all processing and the interfaces to the state and county systems were built by Electronic Data Systems (EDS); and GeoAccess provided the health plan and provider databases.
Health-e-App was pilot tested in low income and under-served areas in San Diego County. After the successful pilot deployment in San Diego County, the State focused on statewide County and Enrollment Entity rollouts.
Statewide implementation to EEs has been successful -- Health-e-App is now available to all Enrollment Entities in California. The State will continue to work with the counties to develop the HeA county to Single Point of Entry (SPE) interface, which enables the counties to receive the Health-e-App electronically. Counties wishing to receive HeAs electronically should contact the State.