MNsure plans new software updates later this month. File photo of a MNsure marketing event in Minneapolis earlier this year. (Star Tribune file/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

MNsure has scheduled IT upgrades for late August that are meant to respond to long-standing complaints the system can't keep up with important life changes for enrollees.

The state's health exchange also is spending $473,000 to provide website users with an online tool that will help them understand out-of-pocket costs associated with different health insurance options available through MNsure.

Both technology advances were announced during a MNsure board meeting in St. Paul on Wednesday.

Even with the new features, MNsure officials acknowledged that the technology road remains rough, including disclosures this summer about a large backlog in health insurance renewals and problems with sending invoices.

"We acknowledge that we're not where we want to be," said Scott Peterson of the state's MN.IT department.

Minnesota launched the MNsure exchange in 2013 to implement the federal Affordable Care Act. People can use the exchange to buy private health insurance coverage, or enroll in Medicaid and MinnesotaCare.

MNsure is also the computer system that state and county workers use to manage cases for people in the public health insurance programs.

For more than a year, county government workers across Minnesota have complained about their struggles to use MNsure to record "life events" for people with publicly funded coverage.

Last year, for example, county workers said the process for a adding a baby to public insurance coverage takes at least 45 minutes in the MNsure system, whereas it took no more than 5 minutes in the old system for managing public programs.

One reason is that, through MNsure, the baby's birthdate must be entered at 40 different points in the data-entry process, said Marti Fischbach, director of employment and economic assistance for Dakota County.

In an April letter to the MNsure board, a group of workers from counties in western Minnesota provided another example — the 5-minute process for changing an enrollee's address in the old system now takes more than 30 minutes in MNsure.

The end result has been a backlog of unprocessed life events. This month, there were about 22,000 changes for people in public health insurance programs that hadn't yet been recorded, according to the state Department of Human Services (DHS).

Failure to enter life events on a timely basis can block people from getting the coverage they need, but the DHS says it has systems to get changes made in emergency situations.

On Aug. 22, a series of updates to the MNsure IT system are scheduled to include three software "wizards" that should make it easier for state and county workers to make the changes.

With the new wizards, workers will input data once and find it's automatically populated into multiple fields, said Peterson, the state IT official. As a result, county workers should find it's easier to perform three tasks: add a baby or other household member to coverage, change someone's status in the system so they are now eligible for benefits and remove someone from coverage.

People qualify for Medicaid and MinnesotaCare based on their income and the number of people in a household. So as income and family size change, eligibility for coverage can change, too.

The wizards are meant to not just eliminate redundant entries, but also reduce the potential for errors.

"It's just a way for the counties to streamline," Peterson said, adding that the term wizard was not meant to be "confusing people with Harry Potter."

"We're keenly aware that these three wizards don't solve all of the world's problems," he added. "There's a lot of work to do. There are many more of these that can be done."

The health plan comparison tool is being developed by an outside vendor called Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit consumer group based in Washington, D.C. With the program, consumers will see not just premiums and deductible amounts for different insurance policies, but also estimated out-of-pocket costs based on an individual's expected use of services.

The tool is a response to concerns that too many people buying coverage through health exchanges like MNsure have been lured into buying low-premium coverage that requires significant out-of-pocket costs when people need care.

Christopher Snowbeck • 612-673-4744

Twitter: @chrissnowbeck