HIPAA Implementation Outreach and Education

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded this Master IDIQ on September 1, 2011, to establish a framework for health care communications, outreach, and education supporting HIPAA implementation and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. Ordering closed on August 31, 2018; the vehicle is no longer active.

The vehicle is fully closed to new orders. The last task order award occurred on September 23, 2018, nearly eight years ago. All 26 awarded task orders have been completed, and the combined task-order potential value of $458.4 million has been entirely obligated with no remaining capacity.

The vehicle funded communications, public education, and outreach campaigns spanning health insurance exchanges, Medicare enrollment, children's health coverage, fraud prevention, chronic care management, quality measurement programs, and regulatory compliance (ICD-10, electronic health record standards). All work supported Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services initiatives. Task orders employed both time-and-materials and firm fixed-price structures.

Competition was dominated by IPG Dxtra, Inc., which secured 10 of 26 orders (38% of total orders by count) representing $276 million in combined potential value (60% of the vehicle total). Porter Novelli Public Services Inc. held the second position with 8 orders worth $115.2 million. Ketchum Inc. captured 4 orders for $48.4 million. Fleishman-Hillard Inc. and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide LLC each received 2 orders. All five primes are national communications and public relations firms. No set-asides were used; all orders competed unrestricted.

Ordering activity peaked in 2015 with five orders, followed by 2016 (three orders), 2018 (three orders), 2017 (two orders), and 2014 (one order). Individual task-order ceilings ranged from $491 thousand to $83.7 million. The largest single order was a health insurance exchange public education campaign to Ketchum Inc. valued at $83.7 million (awarded April 12, 2013, performance through July 31, 2014).

The Congress addressed the need for a consistent framework for electronic health care transactions and other administrative simplification issues through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA),enacted on August 21, 1996. As such, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has awarded a Master IDIQ for adopting standards for certain electronic transactions to enable health information to be exchanged more efficiently and to achieve greater uniformity in the electronic transmission of health information related to the The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.