Help for Medicaid IT Vendors

CMS www.cms.gov has permanently extended the 90 percent federal match for investments in Medicaid www.medicaid.gov systems. Overall, CMS has made an annual investment in state Medicaid information technology of more than $5 billion which has enabled states to modernize their Medicaid IT systems.

A meeting held recently in Palo Alto California with several Medicaid CIOs and Medicaid directors was led by the Acting Director for CMS Andy Slavitt. He told the attendees how CMS wants to take advantage of and leverage investments made by other states by investing in Software-as-a- Service (SaaS).

SaaS is a software licensing and delivery model where software is licensed on a subscription basis. This allows for a faster development cycle and opens more opportunities to smaller vendors to develop focused solutions for use across multiple states.

Investing in SaaS would entice small innovative companies and investors to the State Medicaid IT space since Medicaid and CHIP provide health coverage to nearly 72 million Americans. However, this figure is consistently growing as more states are choosing to expand coverage.

Slavitt states in his CMS blog, “With over 30 states currently redesigning their Medicaid eligibility and/or claims processing and information retrieval systems, 2016 will be the most active year to date for Medicaid growth and will present new IT business prospects.”

In addition, the Medicaid program is undergoing tremendous changes, such as a growing emphasis on managed care, providing home and community-based services to seniors and people with disabilities, and developing new models of delivery system reform to improve health outcomes while controlling costs.

Recognizing that it can be a challenges for the growing healthcare IT development sector to identify state Medicaid procurement opportunities, CMS offers a “One-Stop-Shop” for the technology community to connect with states looking for innovative solutions. On this site, vendors can easily find links to state Medicaid procurement websites and to state Medicaid IT RFPs.

This opens opportunities to smaller vendors to develop solutions for use across multiple states or use solutions from comparable sectors such as commercial insurance or large provider systems. CMS believes that this approach to use one site with state information will expedite states’ IT timelines, decrease overall costs, and ignite adoption of advanced technology solutions.

Go to www.medicaid.gov and then search for One-Stop-Shop or for “state Medicaid IT Procurement Opportunities for more information.