The National Governors Association (“Florida Invests $308 Million in New Medicaid Computer System“) reports that Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has won a contract to “develop a new Medicaid computer system beginning March 1, 2008” for the state of Florida. The system is supposed to help participants navigate Florida’s Medicaid system, file claims, and report fraud. The article does not state whether or not the database will contain patient health information, which would likely be opposed by privacy advocates. An interview with the EDS vice-president of U.S. state and local government businesses hinted that the company was hoping to be a part of the digitization of patient records.
Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Oregon and Kentucky have already signed multi-year contracts with EDS to implement Medicaid data management services. The deals are for $189m, $73m, $48m, $73m, and $170m respectively.
One of the major reasons for the flurry of activity is the Medicaid IT Architecture (MITA) project, which attempted to give guidelines for database and IT modernization for each state’s Medicaid program.