CHIPER Software
CHIPER Software: Identifying Students Disenrolled from Health Coverage
The CHIPERS Grant Project developed software that easily identifies students disenrolled from health coverage. This program, or CHIPER Software*, electronically matches the state’s quarterly tapes for Medi-Cal enrollment with school district rosters sorted by school site.
Here’s how the CHIPER Software works:
When a school receives their LEA Medi-Cal Billing Option Student Eligibility match file from the State, the file is in a Flatfile format, which is not in a user-friendly format. The CHIPER Software takes the State’s Student Eligibility File in the Flatfile format and produces a user friendly Excel report that identifies the students’ eligibility status for the past twelve months. The CHIPER report features a “hot lead” indicator for students who have recently dropped their health insurance coverage. Health outreach staff can use this report to target families who have problems maintaining eligibility in order to increase retention.
For more information and how to create your own CHIPER report, click here.
Student-specific Targeted Outreach
Preliminary experience with the use of the CHIPER Report has been positive. Using the reports to identify students whose insurance is lapsing or expired is the first step toward targeting outreach where it is most needed. Many attempts to contact families have been successful and have resulted in enrolling the child. Also, sometimes children who are identified on the list have siblings that may be eligible for insurance and the outreach worker can take steps to enroll the additional children.
We have learned that the most challenging aspect of this process is having the correct contact information for families. Target families often move and change phone numbers or own prepaid phones and do not maintain the credit necessary to receive calls. To overcome this communication barrier, SCUSD and MCOE have partnered with local welfare offices. In Sacramento, the Department of Human Assistance (DHA) has the most current information on clients which may help outreach workers access to this information and further streamline outreach efforts to families. SCUSD also uses its District level student database (Zangle) to verify and/or correct contact information. Similarly, MCOE has already established a working relationship with the County Department of Social Services (DSS), which facilitates eligibility determination.
It is also important to have a bilingual outreach team. Both MCOE and SCUSD have a Spanish bilingual outreach worker who is effective on the phone for the first contact. This is a critical component of establishing initial rapport with the family.
* CHIPER Software and reporting template developed and maintained by Teachers for Healthy Kids.
