State of Vermont: Integrated Eligibility & Enrollment Program
Modernizing and simplifying the process of applying to fragmented safety net programs.
The vision for Vermont’s Agency of Human Services’ Integrated Eligibility & Enrollment Program is to ensure that Vermonters can easily gain and maintain access to the benefits that they’re eligible for, like Medicaid and food assistance. Sounds straightforward, but integrating these programs is a massive undertaking. In almost every state, the benefits application experience is fragmented. Applicants have different applications for each program, different numbers to call, and different offices to visit. Staff have siloed systems and manual, repetitive processes. Nava’s partnership with Vermont on this initiative has so far included two phases…
Phase 1 was a “document uploader,” focused on helping Vermonters submit documentation that proves their eligibility. By the end of Phase 1, the document uploader was fully integrated with the State’s on-premise document management system and was available to 100% of Vermont’s benefits programs. A much higher percentage of Vermonters are now submitting documents on the same day as the request, and applicants are receiving eligibility determinations and their benefits many days (and sometimes weeks) sooner.
Phase 2 of this work is now underway, and the goal for this phase is to build an MVP of an integrated online application that will ultimately provide a single application experience to Vermonters applying for any human services program. This work is building on a lot of our team’s experience working on HealthCare.gov’s application experience.