Does anyone administer their COBRA and HIPAA internally? What are som

[Guest Bill55]

We changed claims administrators recently, the new adminsitrator will not be handling COBRA and HIPAA for us. I am now handling COBRA internally and current have 50 active participants. I anticpipate having 10 to 20 Qualifyung events each month. What are you doing? Are you aware of an efficient comprehensive software package that is affordable?

Thanks!

[GBurns]

Please..definitely dont do this internally. The legal liability is more than you could ever imagine. If you look back into the archives of this Board you will find a previous discussion on this same subject.

[Guest nb]

GBurns,

Maybe it's time to bring the subject up again. We are a larger entity, 11,000 + employees, that does administer COBRA and HIPPA internally. I agree that the legal liability is there, but in many instances, self administration may be beneficial.

[jeanine]

I was reluctant to answer this, but at least you have both sides checking in with an opinion now. I work for a health care entity. Part of the entity is a TPA, part is a hospital. The hospital administers its own HIPAA and COBRA while the TPA does HIPAA and COBRA for self-fundeds as well as an insured product line. I think the best answer I can give you is that there should be no problem as long as you have the capability to do it. By this I mean the time and resources available to you. If you are looking to do this on top of many other obligations or work requirements, it will be a disaster. Both the hospital and the TPA have one full-time employee who does nothing but administer HIPAA and COBRA, in addition to getting clerical support.

[Guest kclark]

I totally agree with Jeanine! I currently work for a Non-Profit Health System with 6,000 benefits elig. employees. We use a TPA to administer our COBRA(we call it Church Extension Plan, since we are not required to offer COBRA). Maybe we have the wrong TPA, but we continue to experience numerous problems with eligibility, lack of flexibility to customize letters, annual enrollment.........etc.

I would prefer to bring the administration of COBRA back in-house, however, we DO NOT have the staff to do it.

At my previous employer, we administered COBRA in-house for 6,000 employees. We had just installed TRAVIS software and I was impressed as to the numerous functions and flexibility it had. I looked back to previous messages on the board and notice someone else had TRAVIS and had nothing but problems. It was rather cumbersome to get everything set up but I felt that was because there were so many functions it could perform that it required a lot of data.

I left the company soon after it was installed so don't know how it performed after being all set up.

My feeling is that, like Jeanine, as long as you have the staff and time to do it, it shouldn't be a problem. I would prefer to have control in-house to allow for customization on lay-offs, leave of absences, etc. that our current TPA can't seem to handle!

[Guest Cristina]

If you do decide to handle COBRA internally, one option for reasonably priced software is COBRA Administration Manager for Windows. It is offered through COBRA Solutions, Inc. The number I have here is 602-820-9101.

[Guest mls]

We have over 35,000 benefit eligible employees. We administer COBRA internally. We send out 1,000 INLs per month and have about 1,000 folks on COBRA. We use Travis Software, 1-281-496-3737 (I think that is their support line but that will get you started). It's about $2,500 per year for us. To administer internally, you really have to have good staff who know COBRA law, IS support to help you ensure you are catching all enrollees and qualifying events (we interface through our payroll system). So it can be pretty complicated - but with right staff and technical support, you can do it.

[Guest Mary Jo]

For complete, easy-to-use, and affordable COBRA software, check out affordablesolutions.com. It was designed with the employer in mind under the guidance of a prominent COBRA compliance attorney. It will save you time, money and will help contain your liability.

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Mary Jo Drake