As regulatory pressure increases and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance continues to evolve, Medicare Advantage teams are feeling the pressure to deliver clean, accurate, and timely member communications during the Annual Enrollment Period. Anyone who has worked inside a health plan knows this isn’t just a compliance exercise. It is a race against fixed deadlines, shifting data, and the constant need to get every detail right to support members and maintain trust.
The challenge is that many plans still operate with scattered data sources, manual workflows, and vendor handoffs that slow everything down just when the calendar stops forgiving. Annual Notices of Change (ANOC), Evidence of Coverage (EOC), and Summary of Benefits (SOB) documents contain tens of thousands of variables and getting them right requires more than good intentions. It requires a partner who understands the work, the pressure, and the reality of plan operations.
To talk about what this partnership really looks like from someone who has been on both sides, we sat down with Rachal Wiski. After more than 20 years inside health plans managing these very documents, she now leads NPC’s variable‑driven document development program. She shares how a true system of record, a unified chain of custody, and a collaborative operating model can turn AEP from reactive and stressful into something predictable and manageable for plan teams.
Q: Rachal, you spent more than two decades inside health plans before joining NPC. For readers who may not know you yet, can you share your background and what led you here?
Most of my career has been at health plans where I was responsible for building required regulatory documents for Medicare and commercial plans. My teams handled ANOCs, EOCs, Summary of Benefits, EOBs, and dozens of supporting materials year after year. We produced between 30,000 and 40,000 individualized documents annually across multiple plans, counties, and benefit structures. That experience gave me a very real appreciation for how complex and high-risk this work is. I joined NPC because I saw an opportunity to take what I learned in operations and build a more disciplined, scalable, and reliable platform model that truly supports the teams doing this work every day.
Q: From your perspective, what are the biggest challenges plan teams face with ANOC, EOC, and SB development today?
The biggest challenge is keeping data accurate across all versions when you’re under intense time pressure. You’re managing thousands of benefit values that go into dense, complex documents that can contain well over 100,000 variables, across multiple plan types and PBP versions. One wrong or changed value cascades through every document and forces rework, usually at the worst possible time. The second challenge is timing. Translation, 508 remediation, and print and mail are typically downstream of development but often suffer the most from delays in the document development process. When I worked at a health plan, we were always juggling accuracy against hard deadlines. That is exactly the problem NPC’s centralized source of truth, variable-driven development and parallel processes are designed to solve.
Q: How does NPC’s variable data document development platform change that reality for health plans?
The difference is that NPC starts with the PBP report and Plan data as the system of record across the entire platform – the single source of truth. Every plan and benefit value is managed in one place and used consistently across all ANOCs, EOCs, SBs, and other plan documents. This prevents versioned documents from getting out of sync, dramatically reduces rework and facilitates annual updates. Also, because the platform is built for parallel workflows, translation and accessibility can start during English document development, not after, so that final web-ready PDFs and alternate language versions are available for ANOC mailings and Sales Kits within days of final English approvals.
Q: You now lead the team that oversees this platform at NPC. How does your health plan experience shape your approach?
I approach everything from the perspective of the person who has to get these documents out the door on time. My team builds workflows based on real AEP pressures, not theoretical ones. That means asset management, version control, visible checkpoints, parallel translation support, and strict calendar management. I also work closely with our IT team to ensure what we build isn’t just technically solid but also practical for day-to-day operations, while remaining flexible enough to handle last-minute changes from CMS and internal teams.
Q: Many solutions in the market now talk about “single source of truth” and “chain of custody.” What makes NPC different from your point of view?
Those concepts matter, but only if someone truly owns the process. NPC is different because it’s not just a software layer. It is an integrated operating model. We use benefit details and plan-specific information to create our single source of truth. This information is then shared to document development, translation, 508 remediation, print, mail, and distribution services layers, all from one accountable partner. From the plan side, that level of ownership changes the game. You are no longer piecing together vendors and hoping the handoffs work. Instead, you have one team responsible for the entire outcome.
Q: Many vendors position themselves as technology companies. How do you see NPC differently from that model?
NPC isn’t trying to be just another tool in an already crowded toolbox. We are an operating partner. Technology is part of what we do, but the real value comes from combining the platform, process, people, and accountability. For health plans, that is a big difference. A tool can generate a document. A committed, experienced partner owns the entire outcome, including the audit, the member experience, and the downstream impact on service and operations. That’s what sets NPC apart.
Q: Culture matters a lot in high-pressure environments like AEP. How would you describe the working relationship between NPC and its health plan partners?
NPC works as a true partner. That shows in how early we get involved, how transparent we are about risks, and how committed we are to streamlining the process. During implementation, we focus on making our products and services fit the plan, not the other way around. We know plans don’t change their AEP process model lightly, and they shouldn’t. NPC respects that. We work alongside existing teams, map the current processes, improve efficiency, reduce risk, and earn the right to expand. That approach is exactly what I valued when I was on the plan side.
Q: How does NPC’s scale change what is possible during peak AEP production?
Scale changes everything. Our document development services combined with CORE make adding new plans as simple as answering a few survey-style questions that pull from data sets we already manage. When I worked at a plan, AEP was always the most stressful because of new plans, benefits changes, increased volumes, and more, each of which leads to concerns about vendor capacity. Because NPC has infrastructure built for federal healthcare that affects millions, we don’t have to hope capacity holds; we know it will. And that makes a huge difference when you’re trying to hit fixed delivery dates for hundreds of thousands or millions of members.
Q: Looking ahead, how do you see variable-driven document development evolving over the next several years?
Over the next few years, I think variable-driven development will become the backbone for more than AEP. The same data that builds required regulatory documents also fuels sales kits, broker portals, provider and pharmacy directories, formularies, clinical letters, and year-round member communications. When all of that comes from one integrated platform, plans can move faster, reduce risk, cut down on errors, and feel more confident that every part of the organization is working from the same source.
Q: NPC often talks about CORE and communications intelligence. How does that connect specifically to document development?
CORE allows us to treat regulated documents as more than just output; they become part of the member journey. At the member level, we can track which document was created, when it was sent, how it was delivered, and, through the other integrated services layers, see how it connects to claims data, care management, and appeals or grievances. This combination of data linked to one member ID turns regulatory communications into actionable insights. For plans, it opens the door to understanding how members actually experience communications across enrollment, operations, and service.
Q: As plans prepare for the RISE conferences and look toward CY2027, what is the one message you would want document owners and operations leaders to take away?
You don’t have to manage another AEP with long hours, late nights and last-minute scrambles forever. With the right controls, the right operating model, and the right partner, AEP can be predictable and efficient rather than chaotic. NPC’s Healthcare Communications Platform was built to give health plans that level of control and confidence, and that’s what excites me about the work we’re doing now.