Wash. Medicaid services deal goes to ACS

Affiliated Computer Services Inc. has won a five-year, $6 million contract from the state of Washington to provide electronic data interchange transaction processing in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the company announced today.

Under the contract, ACS of Dallas will support HIPAA-compliant transaction services, which include accepting the transactions and processing them through the new HIPAA clearinghouse before delivery to the Medicaid Management Information System for adjudication.

ACS also will provide a Windows-based field software to support claims submission for the provider community and a Web portal to support batch claim upload, remittance retrieval, eligibility and claim status functionality.

As the state's facilities manager, ACS processes about 17 million claims annually for Washington's Medicaid program, which results in about $560 million in claims payments per year.

The company's EDI services contract will work in conjunction with its MMIS contract, thus allowing ACS to provide a comprehensive array of HIPAA services for the state, according to the company.

Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system. The law sets standards for the electronic exchange of administrative and financial information related to medical services and contains various provisions to protect the security and privacy of such information.

ACS, a provider of business process and information technology outsourcing services to government and commercial clients, has more than 40,000 employees and annual sales of $3.7 billion.