State & Local Weekly News Wrap-Up

By Timothy Brett posted Jun 11,2012 12:15 PM

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CALIFORNIA

The California Health Benefit Exchange intends to award a $359 million contract to Accenture to build an information technology system for the insurance exchange, state officials said last week. The plum contract includes development of a consumer-friendly Web portal. It will also include an eligibility and enrollment system for the purchasing pool, which is expected to serve millions of individuals and small businesses, starting in 2014. The contract includes about $183 million for initial development and implementation of the system. These costs will be paid by the federal government through funds available to implement the Affordable Care Act. Accenture wins $359M health exchange contract

MAINE

HealthInfoNet, Maine's designated state health information exchange (HIE), last week threw on the switch to medical image archiving and sharing, making the HIE the first in the nation to support statewide sharing of X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, mammograms, and other medical images. HealthInfoNet, which went live in 2009 and currently supports the exchange of health records for 1 million of the 1.3 million people who live in the state, will this week begin a pilot to make patients' medical images accessible to the state's healthcare providers. Until now, HealthInfoNet provided access to medical image reports, but now physicians will also have instant access to the actual images themselves, rather than waiting for image copies to be sent (for example) on disks, said Jerry Edson, a consultant on the HealthInfoNet medical imaging project, and former CIO of Maine Medical Center. Maine Health Information Exchange Adds Medical Images

NEW YORK

A contractor hired by New York City to overhaul its 911 system may have received as much as $163 million in unjustified payments, city Comptroller John Liu announced last week, saying he had asked prosecutors to investigate whether there had been any criminal fraud. Auditors in Liu's office found what they said were instances of questionable billing by the contractor, Hewlett-Packard Co., and they accused the city of mismanaging the project. City Hall officials disputed the report, saying they had carefully overseen the contractor's work and had saved time and money by demanding improvements from the contractor rather than seeking a replacement. Liu said that a contract provision could allow the city to recoup $113 million paid to HP during a three-year period in which it had received poor evaluations for its work. Additionally, auditors believe the company may have overcharged the city by about $50 million, based on their review of a sampling of timesheets that found $2.5 million in erroneous charges. Comptroller: NYC could recoup $163M in 911 effort

OKLAHOMA

Hewlett-Packard will continue assisting Oklahoma’s State and Education Employees Group Insurance Board’s claims processing and other services under a five-year contract valued at $90 million. As the board’s third-party insurance administrator, HP Enterprise Services manages the agency’s health risk assessment program, providing online coaching and preventive care suggestions to help plan members better understand their health and how to improve it. Under the terms of the contract, HP will help state deliver a range of health care administration services while helping it prepare for program changes in a cost-effective manner. HP will continue to maintain and enhance the HP MetaVance health solution, which automates a number of administrative processes for the state. HP wins $90M contract for health claims processing

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