D -- Contractor Performance Evaluation Maintenance/Support/Enhancements

The Centers For Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) intends to award a delivery order, under GSA schedule on a sole source basis to ICF Information Technology, Inc, 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA 22031-1207 for maintenance, support and enhancements of the Contractor Performance Evaluation (CPE). They will support CPE Database Application and Report Maintenance. Develop enhancements to user interface and management reports functions. CMS has contracted with private insurers to perform various administrative functions under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act. CMS contracts with fiscal intermediaries and carriers to pay claims promptly and accurately, to safeguard the Medicare Trust Fund, and to foster good beneficiary and provider relations. Medicare fiscal intermediaries and carriers, collectively known as Medicare contractors, must administer the Medicare program efficiently and economically. CMS has developed a Contractor Performance Evaluation (CPE) process that sets performance excpectations for Medicare contractors; measures the performance of the contractor; evaluates performance against expectations; and takes appropriate contract action based upon evaluation of the contractor's performance. CMS has designed the CPE process to review of all activities required of fiscal intermediaries and carriers to ensure they adequately perform the duties which law, regulation, and CMS directives require of them. National teams consisting of CMS's central office and regional office staffs conduct the CPE reviews of Medicare fiscal intermediaries and carriers. The CMS reviewers are responsible for scheduling, managing, and tracking individual CPE reviews and providing appropriate notifications to the Medicare contractors. In fiscal year 1999 a contract was awarded to ICF for development of a national database application to streamline the CPE workflow. The CPE National Database is currently resident on the CMS network in a production environment. All authorized CMS personnel access and run the application with Microsoft Internet Explorer via the CMS network, with remote users dialing into the network. The front-end of the application (user interfaces) is distributed via an Intranet web site to all authorized users. The centralized database application also provides comprehensive management reports data for planning and analysis purposes. ICF designed, developed, tested and implemented the CPE database application. This will allow ICF to continue with tasks from the original work statement to safeguard the database against system degradation and maximize the government's ability to respond to mandated critical time frames.