The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has awarded HP Enterprise Services a task order potentially worth $26 million to assure that the data the agency receives for meaningful use incentive payments is accurate.
The task order, announced Oct. 13, also requires HP to maintain CMS' Integrated Data Repository (IDR), which will collect the data, and to provide CMS with recommendations about improving quality data services.
Beginning in 2011, CMS will pay thousands of dollars apiece to those providers who can show they have adopted and are using electronic health records (EHRs) according to the final meaningful use rules published in July.
HP will focus on making certain that the payment grade data provided by the IDR to the National Level Repository (NLR) matches the data in each provider's system. The NLR will process and qualify the provider transactions before distributing the EHR incentive payments.
That means HP has to create the requisite reconciliation, audit and reporting systems to guarantee the integrity of the IDR data, on top of maintaining the existing IDR database environment.
In May, CMS awarded Northrop Grumman a $34 million contract to build the National Level Repository. HP is also the NLR's data quality contractor.
