Glenn Stream, former president of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), has warned that there are a lot of challenges ahead for providers, especially in terms of questions from patients about their insurance registration.

He made these remarks a few days before marketplaces for federal and state health insurances went live.

The Obamacare Health Insurance Exchange Marketplace opened October 1, 2013. The idea was to allow patients an easy platform to get registered for a coverage that suits them. Patients need to remember these three important dates, as the health care roll-out begins:

• October 1, 2013 – Open enrollment starts
• January 1, 2014 – Health coverage starts
• March 31, 2014 – Open enrollment ends

Patients looking for coverage should consider it a simple shopping experience, and complete it quickly without delay because the next date (Jan. 1, 2014) when the health coverage starts, is around the corner. When you go on HealthCare.gov, you will be asked specific demographic questions that will lead to more questions on what type of coverage you require. You may very well encounter glitches since it is a system in its nascent stages of development. So, you may approach your physician for the best advice.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) offers three valuable tips to make the online registration process smoother for patients. These will help patients create accounts and explore the information available in exchanges.

1. An account verification email with “Marketplace account created” must reach your inbox. If you haven’t received it yet, check your spam folder, it may be lurking there.
2. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) resets email addresses in to clear any problems in the system. So, if you think that you are unable to create an account, you need to try again with your email address to register, and choose a different username from the one used before.
3. If you feel the system is loading very slow, clear out your web browser’s history, cookies and cache. It will clear your issue of slow load-up time.

No website is perfect and Healthcare.gov is no exception. CMS wants to improve its user experience, so, what patients need to know is that they should approach providers whenever they have any issue. Providers must play a critical role in the development of the online process. Federal systems providing online services cannot help everybody, and in the broader sense, they are just a puzzle piece in solving seamless patient registration for varied coverage plans.