PWC Wins Medicare Work

PricewaterhouseCoopers has been awarded a 10-year contract worth up
to $328.4 million to develop and test a single, unified system that will combine Medicare's many accounting operations.

The Arlington, Va., consulting unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers of New York will handle systems integration for the project. Oracle Corp. of Redwood Shores, Calif., will provide the financial accounting software, and Electronic Data Systems Corp. of Plano, Texas, will provide application hosting services in support of the Oracle software.

Twelve other software and hardware firms are participating, including
FreeBalance Inc. of Arlington, Va., which will provide grants management software.

The project will ensure the program pays correctly for the care of Medicare beneficiaries, saving about $1.2 billion through fiscal 2010 by allowing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to better record, track and collect receivables, the Department of Health and Human Services said. In fiscal 2002, Medicare will pay an estimated $252 billion on behalf of its 40 million beneficiaries.

The new Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System will eventually replace 53 systems in use by the private insurance companies that process and pay nearly 3 million Medicare claims every day.