State awards seven-year, $140M Medicaid IT contract

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Florida is going with Automated Health Systems (AHS) to handle a multiyear, $140 million IT contract involving the state’s massive Medicaid program.

The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) initially awarded the contract to AHS earlier this month. The company’s competitors had until June 27 to submit written notice to the agency if they wanted to challenge the decision.

AHCA did not respond to Florida Politics’ requests for information regarding challenges. But the agency did receive informal notices of appeal from vendors. However, a formal challenge wasn’t filed by the June 27 deadline and the website shows the bid is closed.

Immediate attempts to contact AHS for a comment were unsuccessful.

The contract could be for up to a ten-year period. The underlying contract is for a seven-year stint, but the invitation to negotiate (ITN) allows the state to enter into a three-year renewal. If the contract is renewed, the ITN makes clear that it is the agency’s policy to reduce the overall payment amount by “at least” 5% “unless it would affect the level and quality of services.”

The $140 million ITN was one of three the state has advertised as it moves ahead with remodeling the Florida Medicaid Management Information System, known as FMMIS, from a singular system into a modular one instead. The new system is called Florida Health Care Connections, or FX.

The contract with AHS centers around what is known as the unified operations center (UOC), which is responsible for all interactions between the agency and stakeholders, a group that includes customers, providers, vendors, other state agencies and others. 

The UOC is responsible for management and tracking of outbound communications, and printing, fulfilling and mailing (including standard and electronic mail) information of any type as approved by the agency on a scheduled and an ad-hoc basis.

The UOC also provides historic and real-time analytic capabilities to understand issues, trends and opportunities to inform decision-making and improve the interaction with customers, health care providers and managed care plans.

Meanwhile, the agency again pushed back the timeline to award a seven-year, $33 million contract for a provider services module. That decision was supposed to be announced June 30, but it has been pushed back to later this fall.

According to state documents, the provider services module will electronically capture, validate and process provider enrollment applications (initial and renewal), including an automated screening and monitoring component to support state and federal requirements.

The third ITN the agency will award is for so-called core systems and is expected to be worth $154.5 million.