Deltek Pulse: Health and human services month in review, March 2014

In March, the health and human services team saw the release of a little more than 880 solicitations with either health care or social services as a primary vertical. The word cloud below represents the frequency of terms in those solicitations. 

As one can see from the below map, California, Pennsylvania and Texas saw the largest number of health and human services-related opportunities, while Alabama, South Dakota, and Wyoming had no related activity.

Notable Opportunities

• The state of Vermont released an RFP for the design, development, and implementation of a health and human services integrated eligibility (IE) solution on March 20. The future IE system will replace the state’s legacy ACCESS integrated eligibility system, and integrate with the eligibility functions that are required to be implemented due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
• Maryland released an RFP for an electronic benefits transfer (EBT) system and support services on March 21. The Maryland Department of Human Resources is seeking to convert its current EBT system into a Web-based environment and enhance operational performance, improve baseline functionality, and optimize system software and network communications.
•  Indiana released an RFP for a replacement Women, Infants and Children (WIC) management information system (MIS) on March 25. This RFP is in response to the state’s need for the transfer, modification, implementation, and operation of the existing Florida WISE WIC management information system to Indiana WIC. 
• South Carolina released an RFP for planning services to prepare for the design, development and implementation of an EBT system for the WIC program. Proposals are due April 17.
• The state of Tennessee released an RFP for pharmacy benefit management services on April 1. The state intends to contract with a single pharmacy benefits manager for the provision of pharmacy benefit account management, network and formulary management, utilization management, custom clinical programs as required, and a state-of-the-art online point-of-sale pharmacy claims processing system.
• Rhode Island released an RFP for analytics for the state’s all-payer claims database on March 21. The selected vendor will provide professional services for the quality assurance, data management, analytics, access, and reporting of RI-APCD data. Proposals are due on April 22.

Analyst Take

Spring will continue to be a busy procurement season for state and local governments in the health and human services fields. Whether a state is acquiring new technology or replacing and upgrading existing IT systems, vendors are seeing increased opportunities for health and social services business across the country. Now that the open enrollment period has finally come to a close, several states are thinking about how to improve or revamp their health insurance exchanges; most notably Maryland, where the state will adopt a new health insurance exchange modeled after Connecticut’s system. Vendors needing an updated report regarding the HIX market can find a new Deltek Industry Analysis piece, here. Deltek is also releasing a report on the MMIS market later this spring.