Washington, DC—(ENEWSPF)—November 21, 2013. Last night, we added several dozen software fixes to the HealthCare.gov website, as we continue to make steady progress towards ensuring that the site works smoothly for the vast majority of users by the end of November. These fixes address key functions of the site: improving user experience; improving the enrollment process; and improving the workflow for agents, brokers and call center representatives.
Here are a few examples of last night’s fixes in each category:
First, to improve the user experience we’ve streamlined the site by removing potentially confusing screens and displays and adding helpful icons and calendar functions.
Second, to improve the enrollment process, several fixes focused on ensuring that information is correctly provided to users as they navigate through the site, so that people can move more efficiently and effectively through the enrollment process, and can be assured that the input they provide to the system is displayed properly.
We’ve also made changes to the summary and the review sections of the application so that information is displayed in a more user friendly manner. For example, records now show which coverage is being cancelled for a member—something particularly important to ensuring accuracy of 834 notices.
Third, to improve the workflow for agents, brokers and Call Center representatives, we undertook further improvements overnight to make it easier for them to work through the site. For example, now Call Center representatives can get to Plan Compare without going through the entire application, again. Additionally, Call Center representatives now no longer receive error messages when a search result does not return any records.
We experienced a 3 hour outage on the site on Wednesday afternoon, as well as a brief outage of 10 to 15 minutes Tuesday afternoon. We understand how frustrating this is for users. But it’s important to note that while HealthCare.gov is working better every day, there will be times when, like every website, it will not perform as it should. These were examples of those times. But in each instance, the team was able to fix the issue and get the system back online. Such occasional slowdowns and unscheduled outages may continue.
We expect to make further progress in resolving high priority issues in the coming days. We still have work to do, but as progress to date demonstrates, HealthCare.gov is getting better and improving performance and user experiences each week. We will continue to make improvements, and we won’t stop working until every American who wants it gains access to new options for quality, affordable health coverage.
Source: hhs.gov
