IBM Wins Federal Contract to Consolidate Healthcare Services and Operations21 March 2006
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services(CMS) signed IBM and two partners to a contract to consolidate 17data-processing centers into three highly efficient ones over the next fiveyears.
CMS expects to save nearly $45 million annually under the new arrangement.
IBM's portion of the CMS services contract is valued at approximately $200million, making it one of the largest federal outsourcing deals ever.
One of the world's largest claims-processing organizations, CMS isattempting to fulfill requirements of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act,which mandates that CMS use competitive bidding to streamline the agency'soperations and cost. Claims-processing costs now hover around the 18percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) threshold Congress set in 2003for health-care related spending.
Other winners of the work, known as the CMS IT Modernization Initiative,wereElectronic Data Systems (EDS) of Plano, Texas and Companion Data ServicesLLC (CDS), a fully owned subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield, of SouthCarolina.
Together with IBM, EDS and CDS will be able to compete for futuredata-center tasks from the Centers under a process known as an IndefiniteQuantify/Indefinite Delivery contract vehicle. This allows certainpre-qualified vendors to compete for agency work in a streamlined andcost-effective manner.
In addition to the reduction of number of data-processing centers and theannual savings of $45, the CMS IT Modernization effort will help theCenters:
-- Further standardize the implementation of policy changes-- Establish better control of IT processes and procedures-- Reduce the CMS system security risk-- Support increasing health care processing workloads The win reflects comparable projects IBM has undertaken to consolidate datacenters throughout the healthcare industry and within government, both inthe United States and abroad.
Contact:IBM Media RelationsJeanne Orfinik914-642-5410orfinik@us.ibm.com
or
Andy Kendzie301-803-2753kendzie@us.ibm.com
SOURCE: IBM
Source: marketwire
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