June 10th, Health Access Pueblo held a community meeting for employers and employees interested in joining HAP.  After a presentation of background info, Chris Adams let Choosing Healthplans All Together (CHAT) for the attendees all at once using the keypad polling technology. Essentially, each person got to vote on the level of coverage (or no coverage) they wanted, and then their choice was entered in CHAT. (We used two projectors—one for CHAT and the other for polling.) After doing the first round, participants were 9 markers over budget. I told them they would need to prioritize and reconsider both what to cover and whether or not they wanted to reconsider those categories where they chose a higher level of coverage.

 The second round resulted in some definite shifts—they removed vision, they chose Tier 1 coverage for pharmacy, and  removed mental health. The biggest discussion was about the relative value of dental vs. hospital—both of these were 9 markers for Tier 1 coverage. Some people talked about the urgency (and the pain) of dental problems and that preventive dentistry was important to overall health, others talked about needing to have at least the minimum hospital coverage. In the end, they chose both by economizing on other categories.

Using the technology and allowing participants to express their preferences through the keypad polling, along with a lively dialogue produced important input.  At the end we added a question about whether they saw value in this benefit package and would be interested in signing up for HAP. It is rare in keypad polling that any question gets 100%, but this one did. Everyone said yes.  HAP has definitely created something of value for the community. 

The online CHAT version can be easily accessed through the HAP website. Hopefully, more people will use this online tool and then want to learn more about CHAT. There are screening questions so that responses can be broken out by zip and income, so anybody can take it.