Washington State: 2,108 QHP selections on Day One

The Washington HealthPlan Finder is the 2nd state exchange to release their initial enrollment data from opening day:

• We had a very good first day of Open Enrollment

• Over 32,000 unique visitors and 886,000 page views

• At peak we had 3,534 concurrent users when on 11/1 last year our peak was of 2,699 concurrent users

• 2,108 QHP plans selected by customers who either did not have a 2018 enrollment or switched away from the plan they were auto-enrolled into

• Over 800 new downloads of the WAHBE mobile app

• No significant system issue was encountered

In addition, unlike the federal exchange and most state exchanges, instead of waiting until after the initial wave of erollments are out of the way, Washington auto-renews existing enrollees right up front, but then changes their policies as people log in and switch to a different policy (or cancels the renewals if people don't pay up or inform them that they're not renewing):

• Successfully auto-renewed 96% of applicants
• Correspondence sent to customers with their 2018 eligibility results
• Customers are able to view and shop for plans through December 15 for January 1 coverage

They also reported that their call volume was way up over last year for the first two days (up 51% on day one, 42% on day two), while their average call time was way down year over year, which is great.