Florida awards EDS $308M pact

EDS has inked a $308 million pact to field a Medicaid management information system for Florida.

The state said last September that it planned to award the contract to EDS, but contract protests held up the signing until May 15. Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) and Unisys had challenged the Agency for Health Care Administration’s award decision. The protests were denied last month. ACS was the incumbent vendor.

Under the contract, EDS will develop and implement a Medicaid management information system based on its InterChange offering. The company will customize InterChange to meet Florida’s specific requirements, according to EDS.

InterChange was first implemented in Oklahoma in 2002. The system runs on Sun Microsystems midrange servers and uses Oracle’s database.

Marc VanDenbark, a client executive and southeast regional manager for state and local government at EDS, said the system provides greater flexibility than existing Medicaid management information systems.

Medicaid systems’ ability to adjust to federal and state mandates “is of a critical nature to state Medicaid agencies,” he said.

EDS has captured seven of the last nine Medicaid contracts it has pursued, a company spokesman said. Four of those wins, including the Florida deal, came in states where the company previously lacked Medicaid management information systems business.

In Florida, EDS’ InterChange system will provide fiscal agent services to Florida’s 65,000 Medicaid providers and 2.2 million Medicaid recipients, according to EDS.

ACS has appealed the protest decision in a Florida state court. But EDS said the court has ruled that the appeal process will not delay its work on the contract.