Most Vermont school employees with unpaid medical claims should see those claims paid this week, according to Vermont Education Health Initiative’s trust administrators. Mark Hage of the VT-NEA and Bobby-Jo Salls of the nonprofit Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust said roughly $600,000 in payments were recently processed.
The unpaid claims came about after districts contracted the small Williston firm, Future Planning Associates, to administer 24,000 employees’ health reimbursement arrangements beginning January 2018. The firm was unable to process many of the claims and terminated all of the contracts in April.
The school districts then moved to DataPath, an out-of-state corporate administrator, but that was also rocky. About 70,000 claims remained unprocessed through September. The following month, DataPath sent out $1.1 million in payments.
Around that time, complaints to the Attorney General's Office Consumer Assistance Program acquired by VPR indicated ongoing frustration among district staff. One complainant, whose name was redacted, wrote in early October that he or she hesitated to go to the doctor, and had medical bills sent to collections.
Another complaint from Christopher Hood, president of the Champlain Valley Education Association, was forwarded in early October to the Attorney General’s Consumer Assistance Program by the state teachers' union, VT-NEA. Hood wrote “many teachers in my district are now getting collection notices for the first time in their lives,” and asked “What is the impact on credit scores? How could this effect [sic] an upcoming home purchase?”
Hood cited one email he had received from a staff member stating “‘People are being denied services by providers if they don’t pay out of pocket. Many people don’t have the means to pay up front.’”
Now, Mark Hage with VT-NEA and Bobby-Jo Salls with VSBIT say almost all employees’ previous medical claims have been paid, and current claims are being processed on time.
“If there are any glitches here that we don’t know about, we’re going to identify them,” Hage said, “and we’re going to resolve them. But we think we are getting to the point where the great majority of the claims that were outstanding -- older claims -- have been addressed.”
To date, Hage said, only 232 out of the initial 70,000 backlogged claims remain.
