Pennie Partner Self-Test Environment

Welcome

Welcome and thank you for being among the first Pennie partners to participate in a trial run of this self-test capability.  We hope that this will prove a valuable resource for our partners across the spectrum of issuers, brokers, and assisters during the coming years as we work to provide affordable, high-quality health care to Pennsylvanians. During this trial run, however, we acknowledge that there may be a few “bumps” that we need to work out, and we very much appreciate your patience and willingness to help us identify and work through these. 

• We have created accounts for you within the environment, as well as fictitious customer records for your use (please see the “Customer Test Data” section below for the information and assignment).
• Our GetInsured partners have helped enable your specific IP addresses (that you shared in the registration form) to get through the protective firewalls. If you encounter any problems accessing the environment, please see the “Reporting a Question or Issue” section below to report that to us and get assistance. 
• As you work in the environment, you may have questions or identify functionality that you feel is not working properly. Please see that same “Reporting a Question or Issue” section for how to report that to Pennie and expectations for getting a response. 
• A number of our assister partners will be helping us review the Spanish language version of the screens. Those assisters who volunteered to do this, please refer to the section “Validating the Spanish Language Text” section for further information about this important way you can help.
• Lastly, for our issuer partners, we have set the environment to look for new EDI transactions and – if they find one – generate a test EDI file on an hourly basis. If you are working through scenarios to validate how they appear on the GetInsured EDI files, you can expect those to be generated hourly.  If you have questions or challenges regarding this, please use the “Reporting a Question or Issue” form to report them.

Reporting a Question or Issue

• You will be testing with our latest code that will be released to production at the end of September. Our internal testing team is simultaneously testing this release through September 17. Any issues found after 9/17 will not be included in the release at the end of September but will be released at a later date, depending upon the type of issue, impact, severity, etc. While you will be able to test as late as 9/30, we request that you submit any potential issues as soon as possible so that we can work within our release schedule.
• Throughout the course of testing, we expect that users will want to communicate both questions and potential defects that have been found to Pennie. To do this, please use the webform located at the following link: https://forms.office.com/g/1ZuCChSq0m. Please do provide as much information as you can to help the Pennie team understand the context and your question or identified issue. Submissions will be reviewed by Pennie leads (different leads based upon the role of the tester) at a minimum of daily, but likely more frequently. However, due to the need in some cases to follow up with internal experts and conduct further research, please do not be alarmed if it takes up to two business days to get a response to a specific issue. If there are issues taking that long or longer, the Pennie lead will at least reach out to acknowledge that they are working the issue / question and provide the best status update they can.

Customer Test Data

We have pre-created fake customer accounts for use by testers in the stakeholder environment.  We have done this because there are administrative steps required to “validate” customer identities, so testers will not be able to successfully create their own.  Each issuer team, assister, or independent broker will have 10 pre-created customers that they can use, and they will be differentiated both by the first letter used for the first and last name, and by the last four digits of the SSN for that customer.  Those are the same within each set of 10, but different from all other customers in other sets.

Please access the spreadsheet, linked below, to find identifying information for your set of test customers.  Assignments are in column J, so please only work with customers assigned to you or your team.  However, should the need arise to identify the owner of a customer that came to your attention (for example, appeared as an enrollment in a test EDI generated automatically) this sheet will also provide that information.

Logging in as a Customer

To use the test customer data, we recommend using the “Register with access code” option from the home page. Use the access code from the spreadsheet, and then use the other information on the sheet to verify identity. You’ll then be able to create a password and setup security questions. Don’t forget to save this information so you can log back into this account later.

Logging in as an Assister/Broker/Insurer

To access your assister/broker/insurer account, you will need to use the link that was emailed to the yopmail.com email address for your account.

1. Go to yopmail.com
2. In the “Enter your inbox here” field, type the first part of your email address prior to “@yopmail.com” and click the arrow to go to that inbox
3. Look for the most recent pennie.com email and copy/paste the link from the email into your web browser to proceed with activation of your account.
4. You will need to receive a one-time verification code via text message to the phone number you provided when you registered for stakeholder testing.
5. You’ll then be prompted to setup multi-factor authentication (MFA) through DuoMobile. You will use this every time you log into your non-customer account.

What can you test? What can you NOT test?

You CAN test:

• Customer flows from account creation to enrollment including EDI transactions to the insurer
• Broker/Assister flows including acting on behalf of customers through all steps in the application and enrollment process.
• Insurer EDI enrollment transactions for all enrollment activity. EDI files will be batched and transmitted every hour on the hour.
• Notices will be generated in the customer’s secure inbox but will not be mailed.
• Qualifying life events (QLEs) and special enrollment periods (SEPs). We recommend you only use events that don’t require documentation before a customer can shop as we will not be reviewing/approving those SEPs. SEPs you can use include:
• Adoption, Birth, or Gain a Court-Appointed Dependent
• American Indian / Alaska Native
• Income change (shopping will only become available for current enrollees if the income change results in a customer becoming newly eligible/ineligible for APTC and/or CSR)
• Death of Dependent/Subscriber
• Loss of MEC / Loss of Other Qualifying Coverage
• Released from Incarceration
• Survivor of Domestic Abuse or Spousal Abandonment
• COBRA Subsidy Expiration

You can NOT test:

• Open Enrollment, Renewals, or 2022 plan year shopping
• Special Enrollment Periods (SEPs) that require documentation before customer can enroll
• Federal data services hub-related activities such as whether a DMI is created
• Identity proofing (RIDP)
• Postal mail of notices
• Broker agency / Assister entity functionality
• NEVER USE REAL CUSTOMER DATA IN TESTING

Validating the Spanish Language Text

For those multi-lingual assisters who have agreed to help Pennie validate all the Spanish text, we are extremely grateful.  The Spanish version of the application should be accessible through clicking the Español link/button on the top right of the screen (it may be next to other links, such as “Help & Support”).  Once you have selected the Spanish version, you should see Spanish screens until or unless you select to actively switch back to English.  Spanish versions of the notices will also be enabled in the environment, although please note that you will have to set the customer communication language preference to Spanish to receive those notices in Spanish, and you will have to access the customer’s secure Inbox to see the notices (no notices will be mailed).  Errors or suggestions that you have for correcting or improving the Spanish language text should be reported in the same way as other questions or issues, by using the Webform discussed in the section above.