Pennsylvania unveils website for appealing denied health insurance claims

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience, or CODE PA, and Department of Insurance announced Monday that they’ve launched a new website for residents to appeal denied health plan services.

According to a press release, Pennsylvanians can submit their information to request an independent, external review if they believe that their insurer has wrongfully denied a claim for “medical service, treatment and items.” The requests are sent directly to the insurance department through the new site. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department uses a third-party reviewer, comprised of doctors and other health care professionals to determine if a claim was wrongfully denied.

Bryanna Pardoe, executive director of CODE PA, told StateScoop that this form can be reused for other Pennsylvania government digital spaces, like a new PA.gov. 

“What we’re really excited about with this project is not only that this is an amazing new tool for the Department of Insurance, but that it is our first reveal of this new digital race for the commonwealth,” Pardoe said. “We were lucky that [the Department of Insurance] was willing to take us on as a partner and almost as the beta of this form experience and what it could look like.”

Pardoe added that the insurance claim website has accessibility features and that throughout its creation, CODE PA checked accessibility at every step of the way, “from design through development.” She said one evaluation rated the site as 98% accessible.

“This is awesome because we’re going to use the same design and template and syndicate that in the future,” Pardoe said. “We also know that we need to continue to optimize to meet the needs of every consumer in Pennsylvania. We have a backlog of hopes and dreams of where we want to go with this application too, so to go live is just the start.”

Pardoe said CODE PA will consider how it can incorporate accessibility testing with the state’s chief accessibility officer across all the applications it deploys.

“It was this really beautiful opportunity for us to do all of these puzzle pieces that we wanted to put together to bring [the insurance claim program] together and bring it to life in this application,” Pardoe said. “Language accessibility is certainly a priority for the commonwealth and as we continue to scale our new website, we’ll be taking that as a big priority for the work that we’re doing.”