The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a $202 million public health insurance exchange program vendor contract.

Booz Allen, a consulting firm, will be the system integrator in charge of the HealthCare.gov exchange information systems. In the past, CMS was its own exchange program system integrator.

CMS is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). CMS set up HealthCare.gov to run Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) exchange programs in the states which turned responsibility for their exchange programs over to HHS.

Booz Allen has won a contract that includes one base year and four option years. If CMS uses all of the option years in the contract, Booz Allen could be the system integrator until July 2020.

Booz Allen has had many CMS PPACA exchange program contracts, but, in the past, was not designated as the lead system integrator. The U.S. Government Accountability Office and the HHS Office of Inspector General have mentioned the firm's exchange contracts in some of their reports on PPACA implementation.

CMS calls the exchange system as a whole the Marketplace, and it calls the group of exchanges it runs the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM).

Booz Allen says it will team up with CMS to "deliver new functions, improvements, or changes to the existing technology, processes and procedures to oversee and manage the evolution, integration, and operations of all Marketplace systems."

Booz Allen will work with the CMS exchange program information technology program management office "to ensure the success of critical mission activities across the system and value chain, to include the annual open enrollment period," the firm says.

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.