CGI Federal Inc. (CGI), a wholly owned U.S. operating subsidiary of CGI Group Inc, has been awarded a competitive, five-year task order worth $55 million by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under its Enterprise System Development Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (ID/IQ) contract.
According to the terms of the contract, CGI will continue software development and operational support services for the Provider Enrollment Chain Ownership System (PECOS) including Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) registration and attestation functionality.
Supporting Medicare’s provider and supplier enrollment process by capturing provider/supplier information, PECOS is an IT cornerstone to CMS’ program integrity efforts and plays a key role in the agency’s effort to combat fraud. The system from PECOS manages, tracks, and validates enrollment data collected in both paper form and electronically.
To date, more than 800,000 eligible health professionals have registered as Medicare providers via PECOS. Furthermore, CMS’s HITECH Registration and Attestation process automatically extracts secured provider data from PECOS to help identify eligibility for incentive payments for adopting Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology.
“CMS is on the leading edge of U.S. healthcare information technology initiatives. Their efforts to streamline enrollment practices have increased care options for Medicare’s 47 million beneficiaries,” said George Schindler, president, CGI Federal, in a press release. “We are pleased to continue to bring our specialized knowledge of provider-facing applications to our long-term partnership with CMS.”
“CMS is driving forward American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) mandates by establishing processes and systems to reward providers’ ‘meaningful use’ of EHR technology,” said Cheryl Campbell, senior vice-president, CGI, in a statement. “With Medicare enrollment at 15 percent of the U.S. population and growing, CMS is revitalizing our nation’s healthcare system to deliver improved healthcare quality and value for many citizens.”
Founded in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is one of the largest independent information technology and business process services firms in the world. CGI and its affiliated companies employ approximately 31,000 professionals.
Rahul Arora is a HealthTechZone contributor. He has worked as an editor and freelance writer for several reputed organizations in India. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Janice McDuffee
