Healthcare.gov - "Thursday, November 7: Best practices for improvements"

[TomCADem]

Here is the most recent update from the Healthcare.gov website, which notes: "NEW Weekend Alert: The Health Insurance Marketplace online application isn't available from approximately 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. EST daily while we make improvements. In addition, between Saturday evening, November 9 and early morning on Tuesday, November 12, there will be times when you can fill out your application, but you will need to return and log in Tuesday afternoon to review and submit it. The rest of the site and the Marketplace call center remain available during these hours."

http://www.hhs.gov/digitalstrategy/blog/2013/11/best-practices-for-improvement.html

Improvements and enhancements for HealthCare.gov and the Health Insurance Marketplace continue to advance every day.

Yesterday, we reported slowness on the site and some difficulties with users being able to effectively log in. Today, the system is stable but remains slow for users. The tech team continues to work to troubleshoot items as they arrive.

Yesterday we experienced new stresses on the system further downstream in the application than we have previously experienced, revealing new capacity issues. Overnight, the team added hardware to help alleviate that pressure. QSSI, our general contractor, is further assessing overall capacity needs throughout the system as part of our ongoing effort to make improvements.

In addition, QSSI has established a new protocol for addressing items on the punch list. The new protocol includes focusing integrated teams on specific software issues within the application and enrollment process – this includes things such as eligibility, enrollment, and plan compare in particular – prioritizing the fixes in each category and fully testing them prior to implementation.

The performance teams are planning multiple software releases per week going forward. This will help us execute fixes with the necessary pace and precision.

Because performance teams are dedicated by category, they are becoming increasingly proficient in developing fixes quickly and building an ongoing pipeline of improvements for implementation. If a fix becomes too complex to deploy rapidly, it is assigned to a dedicated escalation team to address.

This protocol is a best practice approach from the private sector that will help us make progress on our punch list and continuously improve the functionality and performance of HealthCare.gov.