Overview

Washington Healthplanfinder is one of the fourteen health insurance marketplaces in the United States and was created in accordance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare.

Washington Healthplanfinder is a state-operated website that allows residents of the state of Washington to shop for and to sign up for medical insurance with a private insurance company. Individuals who sign up may also obtain subsidies from the state that cover a portion of the insurance premiums in accordance with Obamacare. The subsidies may be paid directly to the insurance company. The premium payments (minus subsidy) are paid directly to the insurance company by the insured individual.

Project Scope

WAHBE produces various data-informed technical, strategic, and policy-related reports and communications to inform internal and external stakeholders including:

• Committees
• Workgroups
• WAHBE Board
• Washington State Legislature
• State Agencies

Types of reports and communications provided by WAHBE include Enrollment reports, Insurance Plan Certification documents, Health and Equity reports, Data-driven graphics for handouts and presentations.

WAHBE reports and communications weren't getting produced or produced timely. Reasons included:

• The existing intense, manual processes necessary to create reports
• WAHBE lacked an internal resource capable of coordinating the analysis and transformation of the data into understandable graphics and information (data visualization) that support the report or communication goals.

In addition to coordinating the data analysis and transformation, the vendor was required to help implement, to the extent possible, the automation or semi-automation of ongoing standardized reports.

The selected vendor was supposed to work with WAHBE Communications, Data, and Policy staff to bring data reports from concept to production.

Solution

V Group as a prime vendor is required to collaborate with Communications, Data, and Policy staff to bring data reports from concept to production using Microsoft office products. We coordinate staff inputs and provide expertise on format, data visualization, visual design to create reports that reflect that expertise. Our experts provide support in verifying the accuracy, consistency, and readability of the reports and also report production steps. We are working with the policy lead/subject matter expert to define the data request and report goals/outcomes. As a part of the deliverable V Group works with data analysts to refine the request and review results to confirm shared understanding, address outliers, identify any additional data needed to inform context. We are responsible to convert data tables to consumable formats such as performing secondary analysis to groups or create charts, comparisons, and calculations like totaling or percentages.

For the project, we create graphic representations to effectively convey messages. The team creates narrative or topline messages and content with policy leaders and communications and also works with communications on final production with appropriate templates and formatting.

Technology