AUSTIN - Texas needs to do more to help parents track renewal applications to the state's low-cost health insurance plan for children and also to improve the way a state contractor handles incomplete files, according to a study released today.

A children's health-policy institute at the University of Florida 500 families, which renewed their enrollment in the Texas health plan, and 500 families that didn't.

One-fourth of the families, which didn't renew their coverage incorrectly thought their children still were enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Nearly half the non-renewing families said the course was gratuitously difficult.