A review of May’s health care and social services activity

Deltek Analyst Kate Tussey reports.

Whenever I sit down to write a blog, it seems I always start with the latest number of grants the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released to states. Last month did not disappoint. In May, another $35 million went out to Indiana, Rhode Island, and Washington state to begin building health insurance exchanges. Exchanges, along with coinciding Medicaid reform modernization, is likely to dominate the news for the rest of the year as states are now midway through the planning process. The most recent round of grants was for level 1 funding (funding for the initial year of work). The level 2 funding cycle closes on June 30, 2011. Quarterly opportunities will continue for five more quarters until June 29, 2012. Deltek is hard at work on an upcoming analyst perspective summarizing where states are in the exchange process and the future of these systems.

May saw the release of a highly anticipated solicitation for shared services and initial use cases by the Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHINSS). MiHINSS, along with the state of Michigan and the Michigan Health Information Technology Commission, is seeking a vendor to provide a statewide health information exchange (HIE) platform that delivers a secure and efficient exchange of patient health care information. Proposals are due by June 8, 2011. In other areas of health care, Tennessee released a request for proposals (RFP) for a call center for TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid program. Proposals are due by June 13, 2011. California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released a request for offer (RFO) on May 13, 2011, for IT consulting services for electronic medical record (EMR) strategy planning.

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