Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies across the United States regularly encounter similar challenges due to the complex, dynamic, time-sensitive, and data-sensitive nature of the services they provide. One of the most common challenges involves leveraging limited resources and capacity to meet the unpredictable ebbs and flows of customer demand, all while adapting to changes in policy and service expectations. Other common challenges include providing services in a timely manner, so customers gain access to assistance when they need it rather than weeks or months later; gathering, verifying, and safeguarding private, protected information; and engaging in the cross-program collaboration and communication needed to provide a “No Wrong Door” approach.
As a fast growing and longtime provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for HHS agencies, Vimo® has seen firsthand how a SaaS approach can help agencies adapt to and overcome many of these challenges, offering the opportunity for true No Wrong Door approach with timely, accurate, and secure service delivery. Below, we offer a few of our insights.
Leveraging Resources and Capacity to Meet Changing Service Needs
HHS agencies are often tasked with accomplishing more than seems possible, and the amount of work they are tasked with can vary substantially from week to week. SaaS solutions help agencies leverage the resources and capacity available to them to meet evolving service needs more efficiently and consistently. They do this in several key ways:
SaaS solutions are cost effective. Because SaaS solutions are commercially available off the shelf and managed through subscriptions, they typically require less design, build, and integration effort and therefore require a lower initial investment than custom-built systems. Subscription-based pricing allows governments to better manage budgets with predictable, recurring costs, avoiding the unexpected change request expenses associated with maintaining custom systems and, as a result, freeing up resources for other critical initiatives.
SaaS solutions offer easy setup and ongoing modernization. Because they typically require less design, build, and integration effort, SaaS platforms also offer easy implementation and modernization compared to custom-built systems, enabling governments to swiftly adopt new technologies and address citizens’ needs without prolonged development delays. SaaS solutions also provide ongoing updates and maintenance, ensuring that governments always have access to the latest features and security enhancements. This approach keeps systems current, avoiding the stagnation and eventual obsolescence that can occur with custom development projects.
SaaS solutions are inherently scalable and flexible. SaaS solutions can easily scale to accommodate increased user demand or expanded functionalities, which is crucial for governments responding to growing populations and changing policies. Designed to be versatile, SaaS solutions have the flexibility to serve multiple departments or agencies with varying requirements and goals, reducing the need for numerous disparate systems and increasing the possibility of sharing resources and key insights across programs and offices for improved capacity and No Wrong Door functionality.
SaaS solutions reduce IT burden. By outsourcing platform management and operations to SaaS providers, government IT departments can focus more on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance and troubleshooting, which minimizes IT overhead. State governments are able to allocate personnel and resources more efficiently, focusing on mission-critical tasks instead of system upkeep.
Delivering Critical, Time-Sensitive Services Fast
One of the unique features of health and human services work is that it typically involves time-sensitive needs, such as Medicaid, child care, child welfare services, and food assistance. Providing these services days, weeks, or even months after they are requested is better than not at all, but such a delay may also mean that individuals and families go without access to basic needs for notable stretches of time. HHS workers and administrators are very familiar with this race against the clock.
SaaS solutions offer quick implementations and timely updates. As previously discussed, SaaS solutions provide easy implementations and regularly planned, shared updates along with seamless scalability and flexibility. All of these capabilities not only help agencies optimize resources and adapt to change, they also provide more efficient adjustments to service delivery, whether those adjustments are needed to align with new policies or simply to improve and integrate current services.
SaaS solution providers engage in ongoing citizen-centric innovation to enhance service quality and speed. The competitive nature of the SaaS market drives continual innovation, ensuring governments have access to cutting-edge capabilities that continually improve service delivery and timeliness. SaaS vendors prioritize user-friendly interfaces and efficient user experiences, leading to increased citizen satisfaction with government services.
With awareness of the time-sensitive nature of HHS work, the Vimo suite of SaaS solutions have all incorporated a first-contact resolution approach. This, combined with innovative integrations between our SaaS platform components, has consistently helped our state clients achieve a 70% improvement in timeliness and, for our state-based health insurance exchange clients, led to an average first-call resolution rate of 95% for level 1 inquiries for and an average of 90–95% of appeals resolved informally without the need for an appeal hearing.
Managing Sensitive, Protected Information
In the process of delivering critical services quickly, HHS agencies are also tasked with gathering, verifying, storing, and managing a considerable amount of sensitive, protected information, such as personally identifiable information (PII), personal health information (PHI), and federal tax information (FTI). SaaS solutions have the security measures in place to confidently manage this kind of data across programs.
SaaS solutions offer improved security and compliance with regular updates. SaaS providers invest heavily in security infrastructure and expertise, offering more robust protection than many state IT departments can support internally. These providers stay current with regulatory changes and compliance requirements, which is especially important for government entities managing sensitive information. The Vimo HHS SaaS solutions each offer a roadmap of planned updates and upgrades to ensure ongoing compliance with federal and state regulations and provide the most up-to-date security capabilities to our agency partners.
Collaborating Across Programs to Provide a No Wrong Door Approach
Health and human services programs are intertwined in several important ways: different programs are frequently used by the same individuals and families, different programs often rely on similar customer information for service determination and calculation, and different program outcomes regularly depend on each other to provide adequate and effective assistance. For example, for many individuals and families, maintaining employment relies on access to consistent child care but also food, shelter, and health care; ensuring child welfare also depends upon access to adequate nutrition, shelter, health care, which often requires employment; and so forth. Given the interdependent nature of these programs, integration between them through a No Wrong Door approach presents notable potential for increased efficiency and service quality.
SaaS solutions provide opportunities for enhanced collaboration and integration between agencies and programs. SaaS platforms often come with built-in collaboration tools, enabling government employees across departments to work together more efficiently. SaaS platforms are also typically designed to integrate easily with existing systems and other SaaS applications, facilitating a more cohesive technology ecosystem within and across government operations.
Each Vimo SaaS solution offers seamless integration with contact center support services, the Federal Data Services Hub (FDSH) when needed, various eligibility and application systems, document management systems, and more. To increase health insurance coverage and reduce customer churn, for example, Vimo has integrated our health insurance exchange platform with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to support Medicaid assessment and determination in various ways based on different client goals. We have also implemented our SaaS work management solution, Current™, to increase capacity and reduce backlogs of work across different counties and programs – allowing for both unification across systems and programs and customization to meet county- and program-specific needs.
Overall, the SaaS model offers state governments and HHS agencies a modern, efficient, and sustainable approach to managing IT needs, enabling agencies to better serve their citizens with the efficiency, agility, and innovation required in today’s digital age. As agencies increasingly look to the No Wrong Door approach to enhance service delivery across programs, the inherent integration and collaboration capabilities of SaaS solutions offer a promising path forward.
Read more about the benefits of a Vimo SaaS solution over a custom-built solution here.