To return to the call center assignment page, please click the Call Center Indicator Assignment tab in the web browser. You may have to hover over the heading to get your browser tabs to appear. Frequently Asked Questions about Call Center Indicators Q1: What is a call center indicator? A: The call center indicator is just a letter we ask you to assign to help us identify which of your plans' prospective enrollee customer service telephone numbers route to the same physical call center. We ask that you assign any such telephone numbers the same letter indicator (e.g., A, B, C, D, etc.) to help us group them. The letter itself has no meaning other than to indicate that the group of telephone numbers route to the same (or different) call centers. Q2: Why are you asking for this? A: This is done in an effort to minimize the call volume to Part C and Part D prospective enrollee customer service call centers during CMS' monitoring, and thus reduce the demand on the availability of interpreters for the interpreter availability measure. Q3: What can I expect if more than one call center is indicated? A: If more than one call center is indicated, there will be more calls placed because the study is conducted at the call center level, but the results will more accurately reflect performance at each call center. Those results are combined and reported out to you at the conclusion of the study at the contract level. However, the raw call data you receive will include a call center indicator number assigned to that call center, so that you can review the data and determine how each of your call centers performed, assuming you have more than one. Q4: Can call center indicators change after being finalized? A: No. It is important to note that at the conclusion of this process, call center indicators are associated with a plan benefit package (PBP). While we will regularly check the Health Plan Management System (HPMS) for updated phone numbers to use during the call center monitoring, updates to a PBP’s phone number will not result in a changed call center indicator. It is also critical that your organization maintain plan-level contact information as it is extracted on a regular basis during the study. Refer to the HPMS contacts definitions to assist you with completing the contact and information sections.  Note: if you have a change upcoming in a telephone number that will not be implemented until a future date, you are still able to map the call center indicator to phone numbers that route to the same call center based on PBP.  Q5: The numbers appearing in the table file are not correct for my plans. How do I change them? A: We display the prospective enrollee customer service toll-free telephone numbers as they appeared in the HPMS when we downloaded them. You cannot add or edit telephone numbers on this website. If the numbers that appear in the table are not correct, please immediately update HPMS and then send an email to CallCenterIndicators@hendall.com with the new or corrected number. Once we have confirmed the number in HPMS it will be updated in the website. We will let you know when the number is corrected in the website so you can apply the call center indicator to the correct phone number.

Please note that you will also need to maintain your toll-free telephone numbers in HPMS so that the correct numbers are pulled for the main study data collection. It is very important that you update HPMS any time you have an update to your customer service lines or other contact information. If a contract earns unsuccessful calls due to an incorrect phone number being listed in HPMS, those results cannot be overturned. Q6: Why are you asking about our interpreter services subcontractor for 2025? A: CMS would like to know the name of the company with whom you subcontract for interpreter services so that we can take this information into consideration when we schedule monitoring calls. All efforts are made to schedule calls to plans that use different subcontracted interpreters in the same time period. Please note that we cannot guarantee that there will never be any overlap, but we would like to plan for this as much as possible to avoid call delays when requesting an interpreter and reduce the burden on interpreter services. However, CMS will not invalidate results where there are overlapping calls handled by a single sub-contractor. Please note that you can use the pull-down menu option to choose an existing service or enter a new interpreter services subcontractor.  Q7: My organization uses more than one interpreter service; however, I can only enter one in the table. A: We can only collect one interpreter service for this purpose. Please respond with your primary subcontractor, or the one that you use most frequently. Q8: Our parent organization uses only a single prospective customer service telephone number. Why are you asking if our one prospective customer service phone number routes to multiple call centers? A: Prior to the 2018 study, CMS did not reach out to organizations with only one telephone number. Starting in 2018, we began to take the interpreters you use into consideration in our scheduling, so we began to ask for that information. CMS is asking organizations with only one phone number to respond to this activity so that we can gather the name of the interpreters you use only.

For this activity, if you have only one prospective call center customer service number, and it routes into only one call center, all you have to do is enter an “A” for that phone number, once for Part C and one for Part D. Then just supply the name of the interpreter service you use.

If that single phone number routes to additional call center(s) on an overflow basis, your organization should designate only a single call center. For example, is Call Center B only used when there is a high volume of calls at Call Center A (e.g., overflow)? In this scenario, CMS will not assign separate call center indicators because it is impossible to know when or if we are calling call center A or B on any given day, and each call center should be providing the same level of services to callers. You should therefore enter “A” as the call center indicator.

If that single phone number routes calls to Call Center B when Call Center A is closed, your organization should designate a single call center. In this situation, CMS has no ability to discern that a separate call center is being utilized on any given day. Additionally, the same level of services should be provided by both call center A and call center B. For these reasons, CMS will not assign a separate call center indicator. You should enter “A” as the call center indicator.

If the single phone number routes to teleworkers, your organization should designate a single call center. CMS cannot assign separate call center indicators for teleworkers providing services in lieu of reporting to a call center. Please do not include this scenario in your call center indicator response. You should enter “A” as the call center indicator.

If your particular situation is not included in the above examples or if you have questions, please contact CallCenterIndicators@hendall.com to discuss. Q9: When are the calls for monitoring scheduled? A: Calls are scheduled and placed to a customer service line during the time it is required to be operable, which is at least 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., according to the local time zones for service area in which they operate. Q10: What if a call center serves multiple plans in multiple time zones? A: When you have multiple plans in multiple time zones in the same call center indicator, any prospective enrollee customer service calls that are made before the hour of 8:00 a.m. in the time zone of the contract’s eastern-most service area or after 8:00 p.m. in the time zone of the western-most service area are excluded from the analyses for that specific contract since the contract is not expected to maintain call center operations at those times. For example, if the same phone number serves plans in both New York and California, the prospective enrollee customer service line will receive calls from 8:00 a.m. in New York time until 8:00 p.m. in California. The calls received in that interval are distributed about evenly. Q11: Can you explain why a prior year’s results were not exactly the same across all contracts within the same call center indicator? A: In addition to the call center indicator, there are other considerations for the study’s results, keeping in mind that results are attributed at the contract level.

For example, plans that are Special Needs Plans (SNPs) are not asked our accuracy questions. Non-SNPs are asked accuracy questions. So, if you have a contract with only SNPs, the contract will not have accuracy results. If you have multiple contracts using the same call center indicator where some contracts are SNP-only and some are a mixture of SNP and non-SNP, you should not expect to see uniform results across all measures for those. If, however, a SNP shares a call center with a non-SNP, you will see accuracy question information in the raw data files, though the accuracy results display as NA (not applicable) for SNPs.

Other considerations are the counties served by the plans, their time zones, and whether or not they observe daylight saving time. For example, some contracts will occasionally serve counties that are split into two time zones. Also, most of Arizona is exempt from daylight saving time; however, the Navajo Nation lands, which extend to the states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, observe daylight saving time. Regardless of whether two time zones are served or daylight saving time is or is not observed, call centers are required to be open from 8:00 am.to 8:00 p.m. in all local service areas for all of its current or potential enrollees.

We schedule our outgoing test calls at appropriate times based upon the time zones served by plans and recognized observance of daylight saving time. To minimize the burden on the call centers, we attribute the results of those calls within the call center indicator, but the results are only attributed to the contract level when appropriate to do so, meaning one should not expect to see uniform results simply because the same call center indicator is used. For example, if your call center covers three time zones, and you have one contract with plans under it that serve all three time zones, all call results would be attributed to that one contract. If you have a separate contract that only covers the Eastern Time Zone, then the results from calls made from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm in Eastern Time only would be attributed to that one contract’s performance. Q12: Our parent organization has call centers that handle phone numbers that serves a mixture of SNPs and non-SNP plans. Do you want us to split these into separate call center indicators in our response? A: No. You only need to focus on which plan phone numbers route into which call centers for this activity. If the SNP and non-SNP phone numbers share the same call center, you should assign them the same letter (for example "A"). The calls will be distributed so that calls are made to both the non-SNP and the SNP number. For example, if there is at least one SNP number on a call center indicator and six calls are made to each call center indicator per week, 5 calls will be made to the non-SNP phone number and 1 to the SNP phone number. TTY calls will only be made to phone numbers that include non-SNP plans. Q13: How many calls are placed to each call center? A: Each year, the CMS contractor re-evaluates the number of calls needed for statistical significance in keeping with the margin of error for this study. Therefore, the example below should only be used as an estimate of the volume of calls that could be received in any given year.

For historical perspective on the Accuracy & Accessibility Study, you could expect to receive, on average, 96 calls to each call center indicator. This translated into an average of 6 calls each week. Those 6 calls were comprised of one TTY test call, two native language calls, and three foreign language calls. This means, we placed approximately 96 calls to your Part C Call Center Indicator, and approximately 96 calls to your Part D Call Center Indicator, if you were a sponsor offering Part D services. If your organization had two or more call center indicators, then this call caseload was approximately the same at each call center.

Each year the contractor will review information from prior years to determine how many calls should be placed for that year’s study. They do this, in part, by reviewing prior years’ performance rates for successful outcomes. In addition to adjusting volume of calls based upon successful performance in prior studies, we also add a small “cushion” to the total number of calls required.

Recall that the Accuracy & Accessibility Study is conducted at the call center level, not the phone number level like the Timeliness Study. Our monitoring calls include the native language (Spanish in Puerto Rico; English elsewhere), TTY (in English only), and each of the six foreign languages that we test. Note that in prior years, a call center indicator could have up to 30 phone lines assigned and we would try to call each of those phone numbers. Another thing to note is that one phone line can be associated with multiple plans.

Q14: Who do I contact with questions about this request or the website, or if I believe there is a problem with the telephone numbers that are displayed? A: Please contact Hendall at CallCenterIndicators@hendall.com.