The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has been looking for a vendor to continue supporting the Healthcare.gov website. The site provides a health information exchange (HIE) portal that requires significant vendor support/maintenance. The latest 5-year contract clocks in at $398 million.
Accenture is the incumbent who began support services for the portal in 2014 with a $45 million contract due to difficulties experienced by CGI Federal during the launch phase. The company then received a $536 million contract to continue that work for 5 years.
CMS chose Deloitte Consulting as the recipient of the latest support contract when it went out for re-compete via Strategic Partner Acquisition Readiness Contract vehicle (SPARC). Unfortunately for Deloitte, Accenture filed a protest in early December that called into question CMS’ best value determination. CMS will now be revising sections of its bid evaluation based on the merits of the protest. EZGovOpps has not received more specific information regarding how the evaluation will be changing; however, we will be monitoring the situation and will be updating as new info becomes available.
This award will “spark” some life into the SPARC program, which has awarded just $225 million so far to unrestricted (large) businesses. See below for awards made to date (click to enlarge):
To learn more about the SPARC program or upcoming opportunities from CMS, sign into your EZGovOpps account and visit this link, or start a free trial today.