The Affordable Care Act is spurring States to create new eligibility and
enrollment systems for Medicaid and Health Insurance Exchanges. At the same
time, many States are seeking ways to align program-specific information to
better coordinate or integrate the provision of services for families. The
Department of Health and Human Services/Administration for Children and Families
(HHS/ACF), through the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), invites
eligible applicants to submit competitive grant applications that explore
interoperability and integration in health and human services systems (e.g.
eligibility and enrollment systems, case management systems, and other related
systems.) Applicants are invited to explore system design and implementation
options, the costs and benefits of different options, and concrete options for
the State and potentially other States to consider. Applicants will also plan to
achieve one or more of the following goals: 1. improve service delivery for
clients, 2. reduce errors and improve program integrity, or 3. improve
administrative efficiency. As States implement plans related to the Medicaid
expansion that will take effect on January 1, 2014 and, if applicable, the
implementation of a State Health Insurance Exchange, States have the ability to
maximize time-limited exceptions to the Office of Management and Budget Circular
A-87, which permits States to integrate human services eligibility processes
into their Health Insurance Exchange and Medicaid/Childrens Health Insurance
Program systems without allocating the common development costs across multiple
benefiting programs so long as the costs were ones that would have been incurred
without the human services integration. This allows States to match common
development costs at a 90 percent federal reimbursement rate (called 90/10
funding) through December 31, 2015. Under the exception to OMB Circular A-87
cost allocation principles, to the extent these business services are core
components of the health program eligibility system, their design and
development costs would not be required to be cost allocated to the other
Federally funded human services programs for certain business process and
technical services. These core components, modules and services may include the
following: Client Portals; User Interfaces; Master Client Index; Document
Imaging and Digitization of Case Records; Enterprise Service Bus; Data
Warehousing; Business Intelligence and Analytic Tools including Decision
Support. This list is not exhaustive, and there are other services that are
allowable under the exception. This 12-month planning grant period will allow
selected State human services agencies the ability to plan internally and with
their various partners while still having the opportunity to benefit by
beginning and/or continuing systems implementation under the "90/10
funding" through December 31, 2015. At the end of the planning grant
period, applicants would be required to produce a public document that details
the outcomes the State was seeking to improve, the set of questions that were
explored, the answers to those questions, options that were developed, the
identified costs and benefits of the selected option, and all planning
documentation produced (e.g., Planning Advance Planning Document (APD),
Implementation APD, and/or procurement documents, e.g., Request for Quote (RFQ),
Request for Proposal (RFP), etc.) It is the intent that the public documents and
all planning documentation produced under this grant can be shared broadly and
freely amongst States in order to help those States expedite their planning
efforts in health and human services systems interoperability.
Eligible Applicants
- State governments
Additional Information on Eligibility:
- State (including the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin
Islands) human services agencies are eligible to receive awards under this
funding opportunity announcement. Individuals, foreign entities, and sole
proprietorship organizations are not eligible to compete for, or receive, awards
made under this announcement.
Link to grants.gov announcement
Link to Additional Information
- http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/open/foa/view/HHS-2012-ACF-OCSE-FQ-0551
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