Understanding Your New Options for Managing Medical Plans
Tap into the benefits of using 834 files or digital change forms for you and your clients.
Step One of digitizing your book of business: Enrollments. And that’s a big one. But to become a full-service broker, it’s time to expand your solution. By digitizing ongoing changes, adds, and terminations, you can easily assist your clients year-round.
Here at Ease, automation for managing ancillary plans from the likes of Guardian® and Principal® has been available for years. And now, we’re able to offer tools to help you digitally manage medical plans, too. By using Ease, connecting ancillary, and choosing digital change forms or EaseConnect834 to manage your medical plans, you become the one-stop solution for your small- and medium-size clients.
Digital Change Forms
While mapping enrollment forms remains an important part of Ease — we have an industry-leading 8,000 enrollment forms and counting — until July 2021, medical carriers were left out of our scope.
In just the past six months, Ease brokers have generated more than 100,000 mapped change forms. Ease brokers can now access major medical carrier forms mapped in the following states:
- California
- Florida
- New Jersey
- New York
- Georgia
- Texas
- Illinois
- Minnesota
- Pennsylvania
- Ohio
- Virginia
- Michigan
Next up: Colorado, Arizona, and Washington, with more states to follow. As we continue to improve our digital change form solution, we plan to further automate the workflow for sending these forms to carriers.
EaseConnect 834
Known officially as ANSI EDI 834 file format — or 834 file, for short — this industry-standard file allows employers to share employee enrollment and other benefits data with health providers and insurance carriers (including dental and vision). Let’s break it down:
- ANSI (American National Standards Institute) — a nonprofit organization overseeing voluntary consensus standards in the U.S.
- EDI (electronic data interchange) — the standard format businesses share information with each other electronically.
- 834 file format — HIPAA-compliant and used specifically for benefits enrollment and maintenance. (Other items, like claims status and eligibility, are handled through different files.)
The EaseConnect 834 file includes demographic information, including the plan subscriber’s name, plan network information, eligibility, and benefits information.
Instead of manually pulling reports for adds, terms, and changes and entering them into a carrier portal (or via email) for medical, dental, and vision coverage, you can help your clients automate this on a regularly scheduled basis. And an automated 834 file means greater accuracy and less room for manual errors.
Ready to enable 834 files?
With dozens of carriers already mapped — and the opportunity to set up connections with new carriers as needed — it’s time to get started with 834 files. With a straightforward setup completed by the broker and guided by Ease, initial configuration and ongoing management remain in your control.
And for carriers not currently published in Ease, simply send us the carrier companion guide, and we’ll map and publish the carrier structure for you.
If you’re an Agency or Enterprise subscriber, simply visit your Marketplace, click on the EaseConnect 834 tile, and follow the prompts to get set up. If you’re a Pro subscriber, reach out to your Ease team to learn more about your options.
Heads up: The carrier must approve an EDI 834 connection for your clients. This may impact your overall set-up timeframe.
