South Carolina solicits feedback from the vendor community to help determine a strategy for modernizing their legacy Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) and interfaces.

The State of South Carolina, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) released a Request for Information (RFI) on February 10, 2010 for a Replacement MMIS. The state is currently planning a multi-vendor approach and Clemson University will continue to provide hosting. Project details include:

Current Status: DHHS and Clemson University have completed a Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) State Self-Assessment which is currently under review by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Department plans to make the MITA SS-A publicly available in the near future. RFI responses are due by March 4, 2010.

Background: South Carolina's current MMIS is a mainframe-based, batch-oriented claims processing system which resides on a Clemson University's HDS Enterprise Server utilizing an OS-390 operating system. A majority of the application programs are written in COBOL for MVS. The web applications are WINDOWS-based utilizing Microsoft Visual Basic, ASP and SQL Server.

Scope of Work: Respondents must address questions surrounding the implementation of a MITA-aligned systems and services, as well as, how to mitigate challenges when utilizing a multi-vendor design, development and implementation approach.

Funding/Contract Value: INPUT estimates the value of this opportunity to be approximately $50 million to $75 million based on similar projects with a likeness in size and scope.

For more information please see INPUT Opportunity #60218. Related SC Medicaid INPUT Opportunities include:

• Medicaid Operation Services #61133
• Medicaid Business Intelligence System #61446
• Medicaid Eligibility Determination System #60577
• MMIS Independent Verification & Validation Services #60575

INPUT's Take:

South Carolina's multi-vendor approach could mirror Iowa's best-of-breed Medicaid Enterprise, as well as, encourage partnering amongst vendors. While it's too early to discern how exactly the replacement MMIS will fit into the state health information technology (HIT) roadmap this will present an opportunity to align the state system with the MITA framework standard and for Medicaid and HIT vendors to begin to work together.