Deloitte to assist state health information exchanges

The Health and Human Services Department is relying on Deloitte consulting to help set up state health information exchanges.

The Health and Human Services Department has selected Deloitte Consulting LLP to provide technical assistance to burgeoning state health information exchanges.

HHS awarded a three-year contract valued at $5.6 million to provide support to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, according to a March 31 notice on the FedBizOpps Web site.

Deloitte will assist the recipients of federal State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreements facilitate the development of data exchange capacity. HHS has distributed $548 million in such agreements this year from economic stimulus law funding.

Deloitte will provide support in governance, finance, technical infrastructure, business and technical operations and legal policy.

Areas to be addressed include maintaining multi-stakeholder involvement; identifying public and private financing for building and sustaining health exchange capacity; and designing the architecture, software, applications, network, standards and other IT components of the exchange. Other tasks include setting up requirements and a procurement process, with change control and oversight, and evaluating and conforming plans to policy frameworks for the exchanges.

In a separate action, HHS awarded a $4 million contract to Mathematica Policy Research Inc. to perform a global assessment of the value of health IT and Office of National Coordinator programs, according to an April 2 FedBizOpps announcement.