Accenture puts up a fight after losing Medicare contract to PwC
By
Nick Wakeman
Accenture is protesting a contract award to PwC to help eliminate the use of Social Security numbers on Medicare cards for 55 million people.
Accenture is fighting back after losing a $43 million Medicare contract to rival consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The contract, awarded under the NIH CIO-SP3 contract vehicle, supports the Medicare Access and Chip Authorization Act, which was signed into law in 2015. The act prohibits the use of Social Security numbers on Medicare cards. By April 2019, Medicare and other federal agencies and stakeholders will need to stop using Social Security numbers as identifiers for individuals.
Under this contract, PwC was to provide program management, systems integration and test management support. The removal of the numbers will impact 75 CMS legacy IT systems, according to Deltek, as well as 57 eligibility and enrollment systems used by other agencies.
Obviously, this is a huge undertaking; Medicare has 55 million beneficiaries that will need new cards. It is also attractive because it is new work, often a rarity in today’s market.
In its protest to the Government Accountability Office, Accenture is claiming that the evaluation was not done properly, and that it should have won the contract rather than PwC.